Impetigo - Horror of the Zombies (1992)

Horror of the Zombies is not much of an evolution upon its older sibling Ultimo Mondo Cannibale, which is to say that it remains the most basest of death metal songwriting, minimal riffing that would make even Autopsy of this period look more complicated. But as I said with the debut, it was never meant to be. Impetigo celebrated the crudeness of the form to a fault, far more obsessed with how they dress up their tracks with lavish serial killer samples than they are at crafting any sort of nuance within the rhythm progressions, drums or vocals. For a lot of their audience, nothing more was needed, and if I'm being honest, I feel much the same provided that the experience on the whole provides some memorable atmosphere or guitar parts, which Ultimo Mondo Cannibale didn't.

But this album does. Granted, this thing is dumber than a rock. The chord progressions all seem like the emergent British grindcore gods of the late 80s being strung out and slowed to a moderate hustle, or crawling along with the first few notes that come to mind. There's a little more to riffs like the one that opens "I Work for the Streetcleaner", which seems like it could have wound up on the Death or Obituary back-lot, but in general there are painful few here that stand out among others. What gives the record its charm are the frilly, weird leads that almost sound like insects approaching your ears when they appear, because you're just not expecting them. Or the blunt growls and garbled grind snarls of Stevo Dobbins. The bass guitar is thick, and buzzes you like the swill at the bottom of the communal coffee pot when nobody bothered to bring in any new filters for a new batch. The drums clang and thump along like an array of pots and pans in the background, not to say that they don't catch and anchor all the right grooves, which make up well over 50% of the album, these sodden, loping, knuckle-dragging bludgeons that well-represent the gaudy undead crew on the cover.

The samples are pretty good, if you're okay with bands using them so often, and they certainly set the tone that this band loves its cult horror, murder and exploitation, which is in my estimation their most influential aspect. You'll recognize direct film references like "Wizard of Gore" and "Trap Them and Kill Them", all of which would go on later to inspire (and even name) many other bands, so these Midwesterners had their shit together when it came to their taste in the obscene. I like when they go even more over the top with the atmosphere in something like "Cannibale Ballet", where the drums set the stage for some warped, freaky vocals that seem more like some emulation of a soundtrack rather than a metal tune. Frankly I'd listen to an entire album of Impetigo engaging in such absurdity because it suits them well. The lyrics are solid, simplistic but effectively written with some ghoulish imagery, and there are also a lot of grooves on the album that still sound perfectly moshable by today's standards.

Like Ultimo Mondo Cannibale, this is so primal that it just doesn't age, there is some gruesome impulse at the core of all of us which can appreciate how straightforward this is, and certainly if you haven't heard the band but enjoy records like Severed Survival, Cause of Death, To the Gory End or The Dying Truth then this is a decent, if not exceptional gibbet of gore slathered in that old Wild Rages Records cheese. If your battered VHS and DVD collection looks similar to the local butcher block, then its a given. I don't always break out Impetigo's records as much as their peers from that seminal period of death metal, but when I do, I prefer Horror of the Zombies.

Verdict: Win [7/10] (making love to the cadaverous whore)

Impetigo - Ultimo Mondo Cannibale (1990)

For all its charms, Ultimo Mondo Cannibale is the sort of album of which I've always felt its actual influence exponentially trumped the actual quality of its content. Not only was this arguably the most important disc in the whole Wild Rags catalog (that shifty Californian label which was so prominent in the 90s), but a blueprint that countless brutal death, splatter thrash and goregrind acts would reference when forging their gruesome careers over the ensuing decades. Hell, just about the entire Razorback Recordings roster owes much of its aesthetic gimmickry to this very CD, even if musically Impetigo's 'offspring' might derive just as much from Carcass, Autopsy, Death, Obituary and the like. That label even did a reissue of this. Thanks to its handy chronological placement and persistent cult horror themes, I am not surprised that Ultimo Mondo Cannibale has developed into one of the most impersonated and worshiped records in its entire grisly pantheon.

Even upon viewing the album, you could tell it was going to rank among the more extreme efforts of its day, but I'd say this was achieved more through the lyrics, sample choices and Italian cannibal/exploitation cover art. By 1990, really, who had seen a more repulsive and disgusting film than something like 1980's Cannibal Holocaust, which this seems to reference directly? The samples of torture, suffering and zombie speculation are quite substantial, and used to great effect, in fact I found them the most fascinating aspect of the album, and without a doubt they (along with others like Mortician) kicked off the decades long trend of borrowing audio from cult cinema, something numerous bands have gone over the top with in just about every song. The lyrics are in general well written, a little more 'descriptive' than Cannibal Corpse or Mortician on their earlier recordings; but there are points on the debut, like "Bitch Death Teenage Mucous Monster From Hell" where they take on a more primitive, punk-splatter attitude for laughs, so there's a bit of inconsistency in how much pathos and brutality one is going to take away from this...

The vocals, too, were well ahead of their time. Sure we had John Tardy, Chuck Schuldiner, Chris Reifert and Martin van Drunen out their painting our ears with their ghastly inflections, but Impetigo was way, way over the top. Spunk-guzzling garbled growls are interspersed with hoarse, haughty barks that would remind me of harder edges thrash acts like Rigor Mortis, while they also incorporated sinister snarls and an even more foundation-rattling guttural which often appears to hilarious effect. Where a lot of the death metal vox of the time felt like they were being hurled at you atmospherically from a creepy cemetery, Stevo Dobbins and his backups felt as if they were mocking you, shouting their lungs out before decapitating you with a chainsaw, and though they've no choice but to feel incredibly tongue in cheek, they're probably a fairly apt representation of a serial killer with a few screws loose. Hell, they even transform the lines at the end of "Unadulterated Brutality" into this weird spoken word sequence above the musical clamor, like a horrific Henry Rollins perversion out to terrify every soccer mom in a hundred mile radius.

While Impetigo were never a 'high budget' sort of band, and would never have even desired such, I do have to say that the production of this debut holds up pretty well. The guitars and bass are thick, muddy and feel like a spiked bludgeon being applied to someone's wet, exposed intestines. The ridiculous vocals are all quite clear, though I occasionally felt they were too loud or dramatic over the instruments. The drums are perhaps the most varied, busy and 'technical' element to the music, with loads of fills in among the brutal blasts or the more mid-paced rock rhythms. It's actually better balanced than an effort like, say, Repulsion's Horrified which had that caustic, buzz saw tone throughout, without losing any of its ability to dig its heels right into your guts and induce vomiting (though that other album is far grimier and superior). The samples are fairly noisy, with clear source hissing, and don't exactly transition well into the music, but at the same time this was a relatively novel practice in metal music in 1990, so there weren't a lot of precedents to follow.

So with all this going for it, where does Ultimo Mondo Cannibale fail me? Simple: the guitar riffs. I have never, in decades, found the chord progressions here to be all that impressive or distinct. The primacy of the patterns is perhaps adequate to the intentions of the music, but it's more or less a smattering of notes that have been mildly altered from Carcass, Death, Napalm Death, Repulsion, and numerous punk and hardcore sources through the 80s. Despite the mesh of thrash and death influences, there is not one point throughout the whole of this album in which a guitar line actually becomes infectious. As a result, I'm left with only the 'dressings' of an entertaining orgy of evisceration, and no actual bloodbath in support. There are occasionally harried periods of tremolo picking intensity, but most are just rather average thrash patterns played at a punk pace. The leads are wild, ratty and entirely forgettable against the meatier rhythm guitars, and there's never any sort of interesting dynamic or atmosphere to speak of. Don't get me wrong, the tunes are pretty brutal for this period and do create a stark contrast to the more technical developments of thrash and death metal taking place, but this sort of caveman approach to writing still would have benefited from better songwriting.

There are also boring little drudge-core vignettes here like "Venereal Warts", "Jane Fonda Sucks Part 2" or the grinding "Heart of Illinois" which are all under a minute in length and completely unnecessary; not to mention they don't always feel thematically flush with their neighbors. I really don't need these wastes of space to assert that Impetigo have a sense of humor; that much is already obvious from the vocals. As a whole, the inclusion of such pieces leaves the impression of a sloppy, undecided effort which still drags its heels behind in cheesy garage grind and doesn't fully commit to a stronger sense of gruesome purpose. Not that it would be a far better record without them, but it would at least feel more cohesive in delivering its already lackluster riff progressions.

Ultimately, Ultimo is just not that special of an album, and beyond a healthy appreciation for its placement in history and commitment to its cult horror/exploitation influences, which exceeded that of most other death metal acts of its day, there is rarely any incentive to listen through it. Albums like Consuming Impulse, Realm of Chaos, Mental Funeral, Symphonies of Sickness, Left Hand Path, and Cause of Death were just so much more compelling and atmospheric musically, sticking with the listener long after the sound was emitted from the speaker. In comparison, Impetigo would just splatter brains and beef against your windshield that were easily enough washed free by turning on the wiper. Its limbs might have grown up and strengthened through future applications of the form, but the roots have long since withered.

Verdict: Indifference [6/10] (prone on the operating table)

http://www.grindgore.net/impetigo/