200 Stab Wounds - Slave to the Scalpel (2021)

As swell and...injury-swelling as the 200 Stab Wounds debut EP was, I think it's Slaves to the Scalpel that really put the Ohioans in a lot more earpieces, and then proceeded to chew many of them off. Although they keep things short here like that earlier release, with 9 tunes clocking in at 27 minutes, I feel like they answered and expanded upon a number of the limitations that material presented, and this full-length is a much better balanced record, one that's grown on me since I first listened through it a couple years ago. On the surface, it's your garden variety, dense as fuck slamming old school death metal that a lot of the Maggot Stomp camp excel in, which basically started a whole new trend for those who wanted their death metal dance-worthy without obnoxious levels of dull technicality and bland production.

But it's what they layer into that experience which makes all the difference, and provides you with a nice half hour burst of fun. For one, the horror samples and synths and effects are a nice touch, they briefly visited this at the beginning of the EP, but it's more prominent on a track like "Phallic Filth" and erupts perfectly into its chugging, grooving, body-breaking rhythms and spurts of blasted mayhem. There's a lot of atmosphere throughout the album, more than you'd expect on such a tight time-budget, and then they use flirt around with more melodies and leads, and even though these are a little unpolished and not always so catchy in placement, it proves the band is a little more ambitious than just scraping the floor of the mosh pit forever. Loads of the riffs have a Cannibal Corpse influence, as you'll hear in "Stifling Stew", and while they're never as catchy or creative as that band was when they came up with these ideas, it's a whole palette of techniques they explore and even dumb down into their bedrock grooving style. The album's a little apprehensive about speed, and they could certainly scribe some tastier riffs when they hit that velocity, but at least they're meddling around with it.

Production is just as good as the EP, if a little more accessible, with guitars that sound like they came from the cattle packing plant, and the bass is likewise cranked up a little and has more presence than it did on the first release. Feedback, creepy growls and snarls, all sorts of atmosphere gives Slave to the Scalpel a vaulted sound that keeps my ears glued, and the constant little details like the Slayer-y evil melodies in "Itty Bitty Pieces" or the meaty bass and syncopation in "Expirated Splatter" that lead to those wavy, morbid riffs go a long way towards flavoring up all the mosh. This group has certainly been labeled as overrated or overhyped, and surely there's nothing too unique about the various ingredients to this stew, but when it's all blended together it just creates this entertaining broth that I keep sipping at despite any of the base stupidity of its recipe. Gory, satisfying death metal with a lot of room yet to grow, but never any prescribed mandate to do so.

Verdict: Win [8.5/10]

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