We have a two band split here, the first being an eleven minute offering from Maryland's Putrisect. Their side of the of the split offers both an intro and outro, while Scorched just give us an intro and in truth; I'd prefer that neither existed. Removing those, we're left with about nine minutes of grimy death metal, which sounds just like it came from the greats. Creepy leads? Check. Thick bass riffs that make it sound like they're playing from deep inside a crypt? Check. A drum performance that brings the right amount of heat and bravado to the record? Check. But there are also some modernisms here, maybe a little bit of technicality and whatnot to appeal to more modern death metal listeners and that's fine. In all honesty, I could do without some of the little technical whizzings on the record, but it later becomes apparent that they're trying to a make a sort of Swedish influenced tech-death and I guess I can accept that. It certainly comes off entertaining and brings more to the table than similar bands I've come across. At least these guys are trying to take the style in a different direction, and here's to hoping that they'll achieve success with it. At least there's more meat on this rotting corpse than I normally get and I can be thankful for that.
Scorched come from my home state of Delaware (born and raised there for the first sixteen years of my life) and they give us an eight minute performance with a similar style of technical death metal to Putrisect. I'm still getting the sloggy tombstones of the genre's past, but I'm also hearing some really great segues and notions of technicality than I heard with Putrisect. While I don't like the Gojira-influence in the first part of “Lust For Strangulation” the track soon moves past that and gives me a pretty interesting little death metal number. “Visceral Ascension” is even better and shows me a band that I can only recommend based on the sheer level of talent that I've heard here. These guys do classic death metal justice, but they put a spin on it that really seems to make it stand out. Putrisect are very much in the same class, and if this is something new in the scene, I'm all for it. You can dress up old death as much as you like – just make sure that it still sounds like old death!
In any case, my pick on this split would be Scorched, but both bands are highly recommended and I think even the older heads might be a little pleased with what they're hearing these young guys do. Face it, these guys could be grooving out to FFDP or whatever mainstream stuff is out there, but they decided to give those old discs a spin or two and saw where they could add on to that formula. I know, I know, If it's not broke... but there's no harm in attempting something a little different. Give this split a listen.
(8 Tracks, 20:00)
8/10
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