Italian threesome Vomit the Soul certainly don’t like to keep their influences hidden (hell, they’re even named after a Cannibal Corpse song). In fact, when you add in touches of Suffocation and a few Dying Fetus-esque breakdowns and you have the basic blueprint for pretty much every band on the Unique Leader label. Not that this is a problem of course, because A) they generally have the better quality of band on their label, and B) I’d imagine that it tends to be quite difficult to set yourself apart from your peers in the leagues of brutal death metal.
These guys certainly know their stuff though, coming on like an out of control freight train with a elephant roped to the front, smashing face-first into your soft and malleable features. The album as a whole is awash with the barely controlled chaos of the guitars, twangy bass, relentless drum battery and vocals that are reminiscent of a Rottweiler drowning slowly in a slurry pit – would you really expect much else? Of course not. Some utterly incomprehensible pig like gurgles appear every now and again amongst the blastbeats and pinch harmonics, not to mention more breakdowns than the AA and the RACs combined callouts for the year. Melodies are pretty much absent, bar the occasional guitar lick that shoots out from the pounding maelstrom like volley of bullets from a railgun, helping to keep it from getting too one dimensional.
Labyrinthine rhythms and twisted riffing is the order of the day for Vomit the Soul, with complex arrangements all gelling into an impressively cohesive album. It’s hard to pick out any particular songs that are better than others, but the title track of the album probably sums up the band best, incorporating just about every element that makes them so good into one 5 minute 20 second exclamation mark.
If you’re not a fan of this style of music, this isn’t about to change your mind anytime soon. However, if you’re into the likes of Devourment, Gorgasm and Disgorge, this should certainly be fairly high up on your list of future purchases.
http://www.myspace.com/vomitthesoulbrutal
