Artist: Sacrificial Slaughter Vs Enfuneration
Title: American Death Thrash
Type: Split Album
Label: Horror Pain Gore Death Records

Sacrificial Slaughter have been around for some considerable amount of time, they come from California and play a brand of death metal with a slight leading towards brutal death, thrash (the raw side of the coin) and grind subtleties. ‘Compound Fracture’ has plenty of modern death metal influences, the drumming is battering, the vocals fill anyone’s unearthly desire and when the band take a tempo change to heart it leads them feet first into early Floridian death metal and that’s a pretty special place to be. The standout track is ‘Acid Reflux’, if you are not thrashing angrily when the guitars bleed blistering around to the start of this then you really don’t have a pulse, music aside, vocally it falls below my palatable taste, a bit cough and splutter boring, but one thing that is the saving grace is the guitars, I love this tone and the way that they are rip roaring brutal and yet add some sense of melodic capability from the recording. However, even with the rawer production of the two bands, I expected something a little bit more out of the box, this is quite predictable and the arrangements are, well, a bit modern (especially ‘Ruthless & Truthless’). Coming from a band that have been in the business for such a period of time, my glass is half full to their contribution (meaning positivity!) but I always have and will prefer a full glass, it is very well executed music but possesses only a couple of flashes of brilliance.

Enfuneration come from Oklahoma and really do sound a lot like Krisiun, its brutal, maniacal death metal that results in exciting and honest music. This has a more down to earth tone to the recording. The drums are utterly powerful, the guitar riffs encompass a little hit of heritage, and with tracks like ‘Stygian Darkness’ leaving you begging for mercy, you need to prepare yourself for a damn good piece of music. These arrangements are a little bit more interesting, there is more flow, more clarity of the written ideas, in essence, more of a package/group. Kick drums are intense, there are blast beats a-plenty but you never ever hear any overtly loud mixes, this is a very, very good mix and recording. ‘Endless Suffering’ grooves in places, guitars shriek and bleed armageddon at the required moments in time, and all in all, this is good shit. ‘Grieving Process Denied’ is Enfuneration’s mini epic, a slow rumbling start, then a battering ensures just over the one minute mark before taking you into a classic death metal time warp, oh if Deicide morphed with older Melechesh, you may have sometime like what I am hearing on this track. In summary, really enjoyable, top class and well rehearsed death metal arrangements accumulated into one little melting pot that is just bursting with energy.

Enfuneration are really worth checking out, in fact both bands are in fairness, this split release will therefore satisfy both of these recommendations, but Enfuneration require and deserve a lot more time invested in their music.

http://www.myspace.com/championsofmetal

http://www.myspace.com/enfuneration

Paul Maddison

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