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Guttural Secrete: Reek of pubescent despoilment

06/09/13 || The Duff

Guttural Secrete are my new favourite brutal death metal band, “Nourishing the Spoil” having become not only the best death metal album of 2013 so far but one of my lifetime classics alongside Wormed, Malignancy, Defeated Sanity to name a few.

I love that album so much, I would have bought me the long-sleeve if only were it not for the dead, dismembered woman in the bottom right with what appears to be a chisel sticking out of her butt. And by that I truly do mean if only, despite dead, dismembered women (and a live one pleading for her life) littering the complete artwork likely to make me even less popular around the parts where I live.

In checking up their debut full-length, “Reek of Pubescent Despoilment” (and it only gets worse, particularly track-names “Fecal Stuffed Fuck Stumps” and “Sculpting Fragments of Mangled Cunt”, sheeesh), I’m overjoyed to find that despite seven years between albums, 2006-Guttural Secrete is just a less focused formation, the riffs and extremity both remain much the same.

Aspects that are different on this record than on the follow-up are that the band appears a little more ‘fun’ here, the music is less complex, less intricately arranged, less suffocating and foremost not as dark; the production is a lighter, fuzzier blend, and the riffs are generally catchier, less sporadic – give it up for fun, catchy Disgorge.

The tricks of the trade are much the same, though, mixing barbarity with groove, speed with sludge, top-notch musicianship; a good example of the levity of “Reek of…” is in comparing “Coprophilic Asphyxia” with its re-recorded version on this album’s follow-up – while time may have tightened the quality of the performances, there is a sloppiness, a more blasé feel that I doubt unintentional from musicians of this calibre.

That sums it up; the quality of death metal here is simply brilliant, catchy brutal death metal done the right way, and a good indication of the sheer masterful nature of what Guttural Secrete would later become – this is the same band simply younger, the standard of music and musicianship barely diminished, simply of a less brilliant standard (and less atmospherics).

My two negatives would be a point made of many brutal death/goregrind outfits, which is too many samples, too long especially; and the riff at mark 2:30 of “Torturous Impregnation…” should have been prolonged or repeated, not since “Suspended in Tribulation” (Suffocation) or “Indulging Dismemberment” (the middle mark) have I heard a breakdown so heavy.

Can’t be helped, I suppose, and “Reek of…” one of the few truly fantastic gems of the death metal scene, making Guttural Secrete masters of the underground but two full-lengths in before their disbanding this year, 2013 – what an EXTREMELY HEAVY loss.

Information
Released: 2006
Label: Unmatched Brutality Records
Website: Guttural Secrete MySpace
Band
Michael Christian Fitzgerald: drums
Jeremiah Blue Jensen: vocals, guitars
Randall James Thompson: guitars, bass, vocals
Bruno Macias: bass

Tracklist
01. Razorized Ball Gag
02. Larva Masturbation
03. Coprophilic Asphyxia
04. Gluttonous Portions of Intestinal Seepage
05. Torturous Impregnation by Fecalized Insemination
06. Fecal Stuffed Fuck Stumps
07. Reek of Pubescent Despoilment
08. Gurgling My Seminal Filth
09. Feminine Skin Suit
10. Adulteration
11. Sculpting Fragments of Mangled Cunt

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