Excrement - Scorched EP (1994)

After hearing records like Demilich's opus Nespithe, Demigod's Slumber of Sullen Eyes, or Sentenced's North From Here, I was quite excited for more Finnish death metal as it was developing parallel or just behind the neighboring Swedish scene. Seeing that Invasion Records had snapped up another upstart called Excrement for an EP, with a fairly cool cover (though a shitty non-logo) for the time, I was instantly on board, and glad so, because for a band with such limited discography, the material here is quite seasoned, having a good production to it that was honestly superior to some of their peers. Where they might fall behind a Demilich or Sentenced is in innovation, what's present here is pretty much an amalgam of classic Floridian style with a bit of that mournful melancholy you catch in the Swe-death melodies of groups like Entombed or Dismember.

It puts its strongest feet forward with the bleak melodies that inaugurate the battering of "Corpse Fucking Art", a track that itself consists of some roiling, chugging rhythms interspersed with flightier melodic passages, giving a pretty broad taste of what the band can pull off. I was even happier when in the midst of "Scorched", the band broke off into this segue with bass, clean guitars and keyboards which was a beautiful way to pull that track together, and though the rest of the fare is more easily forgotten, it still sounds decent when re-listening, and contains a lot of the same elements. The vocals have a brute growl to them which reminds me of Johan's grunts on Tiamat's Clouds, although the music is quite different, and there are some solid leads put together on pieces like "Sleep" or "Distortion", and at the end of the day, it's the atmosphere that rises this above the death metal average of its days. A pity that we never got a full-length or anything further, but the main dude has gone on to play in a bunch of good bands like Cadaveric Incubator and Slugathor that are worth a listen.

Verdict: Win [7.5/10]