Ingested - Surpassing the Boundaries of Human Suffering (2009)

When it comes to brutal death, the 'slam' category is not something I typically derive entertainment from. So many bands of this style phone in boring rhythms offset with stolen Cannibal Corpse/Deicide riffs and dumb Earth Crisis breakdowns, smother them in gore and porn lyrics performed at the most guttural level possible, and seem to amass a great deal of credibility over nothing. So, how is the debut from UK's Ingested any different?

Because it does this well. On the surface, this is no different than a thousand other brutal/slam death metal albums you'll hear, but this young outfit impresses through their ability to craft their mosh pit extremity into cohesive songs that fuse the expected level of guttural violence with some truly crushing old school death rhythms. The riffs are kept simple throughout, but never once extraneous or dull. Most of the complexity comes through the insane battery of drummer Lyn Jeffs, truly a beast. The vocals are your typical pattern of brutal grunts, but they are offset by even deeper gutturals and harsher snarling, and thus kept interesting throughout. The absolute best moments of this album are on tracks like "Intercranial Semen Injection" where they bust out this insanely great, primal death metal riff astride a wall of Jeffs' berserk footwork. The material is consistently strong if you have the stomach for this level of punishment: "Stillborn" sounds like a heap of rotting corpses being fed into a trash compactor, and "Cremated Existence" is like a drunken juggernaut of dumb yet satisfying pit rhythms.

Surpassing the Boundaries of Human Suffering also benefits from a huge production. The drums are at the perfect, machine-like level, while the guitars sear. The record sounds deep and brutal yet clear as day. Thematically, I can't say the band is very creative, but this is not a genre of music where fans are seeking such things, so "Skinned and Fucked" and "Anal Evisceration" should be right up their alley. This is a good debut effort from a band who makes no compromise in their effort to trample your intestines. A labor of solid, grisly craftmanship.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]

http://www.myspace.com/ingesteduk