Oh, such a delightful cover! There is only one thing that makes my flesh crawl more than ants and that is a multi-legged arthropod. After discovering a whole colony of unidentified long, crawly things living under my bed some five years ago it took me several years of nightmares and finally a house change to get on with living again. Thankfully while I’ve had the cover to hand I haven’t been sleep-deprived enough to see the little bastard crawling out of the corner of my eye and with the compulsive need to beat it with a barbell till it’s unrecognisable screaming “Die, fucker, die!” Ugh. Well I can only guess that the members of Zora would be pretty damn proud of themselves if that was my reaction; I don’t think such a brutal bunch are out to make music that will have you thinking of a warm summers day chasing butterflies through a neatly mown lawn…not sure where that came from.
I must risk the possibility of a lynching by saying I don’t normally go for brutal death metal; not that I haven’t in the past given my best shot at Suffocation appreciation or felt a juvenile attraction to the lyrics and artwork of Cannibal Corpse, but musically it leaves me well and truly cold. That said, I listened to this album, originally released in 2007, with an open mind and have to say this isn’t the usual generic, indistinguishable mass of noise I’d associate with this sub-genre. With an instant blastathon, opening track ‘Hipocrisy’ comes at you with a rather groovy melody that almost makes me want to boogie. As the album progresses it becomes clear that this is a regular occurrence and there are some impressive melodies strewn around.
‘RIP’ takes a more blackened approach to the blasting madness, while following track ‘Sign Your Body’ is a more technical fare; widdly guitars ahoy! The bass on this one is heavy as fuck and pounds like a hammer to the cranium (at this point, my notes read as “Take that, Bitch!” – music to listen to when you want to go and kill…kill, kill, kill…) Vocally there is nothing new happening; it’s all monotone death grunts, with the occasional pig squeal for variation but I guess at least you know what you’re going to get here. Title track ‘Gore’ is another bludgeoning assault; it has plenty of energy to this one and the riffs thrash away almost giving a nod to Slayer.
There’s a cool guitar lick to ‘Enslaved By The Pigs’ that gives quite an accessible feel to it. Naturally the pig grunts are unintelligible; a bit like your average copper then and the verse riff is as heavy as one who has spent many a year filling up on donuts. Overall this is a well crafted debut album and fans of the genre should enjoy this. To clarify, the album was self released in 2007 and re-released by the label Bloodred Horizon in 2010.
http://www.myspace.com/zoraxperiment
