This one was grabbed as soon as I saw the title which is one name that George Grau’s excellent zombie opus ‘The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue’ is known as. The intro itself is entitled ‘Sounds From…’ said location and I was ready for a rollercoaster EP full of slow shuffling putrid pus piles, groaning their way through the corridors and feasting on human flesh. After playing it the first time and liking what I heard I checked out the cast list and was surprised to find out this is a bit of a side project of some rather well known underground musicians. On vocals we have Kam Lee who really should need no introduction; also this Spanish listed outfit boasts Noel Kemper and Santaigo Argento whose tongue up cadaver rectum passage names should be recognisable to anyone who likes sprinkling a bit of that Gruesome Stuff Relish on their rotting meat.
The sound of the tracks here will probably not really surprise you a huge amount. After the intro is despatched the title track rumbles in with a rotting gnarly feel about it. This is slow shuffling dread with some nice cadaverous vocal growls gurgling away in the background. We go into mid-pace chug and the song has some nice leads slewing out the morass of beefy bass etched sound. There is a feel of early Necrophagia as well as some of the other bands from the outfit’s day jobs. The lyrics are great and have the zombie films they pay tribute to in mind, I was expecting some samples but there are none. I guess the band are happy to let the music do the talking which it does as this song changes pace again galloping along now and snapping at your ankles. Things have got up from eternal slumber by ‘The Rising Dead,’ again this is a chug laden ode that is not in any great rush, these critters may well be slow moving but their sheer weight of numbers will mean you have no escape. The vocals are nice and grotesque and there is a sense of melody here from the guitars enforced by the chant of “hear their screams, hear their growls.” Just in case you had not got the message there is ‘Zombies Don’t Run’ which includes a shout out to genre directors who excelled at such glorious depraved movies in the video nasty era. I was pleased that Umberto Lenzi was not included amongst them as his ‘Nightmare City’ was one of the first responsible for the silly running zombie which latter day efforts seem to have an infatuation with. Just to pad things out and give you another point of reference demo tracks of the two proceeding songs are included, obviously laid out in Spain before Kam put his parts down and featuring Noel Kemper on vokills.
So if you like death metal and zombies, well this one really is a no brainer. Up the tombstones!
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Pete Woods
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