Aberrant / Nicaraguan Death Squad - split 7" - WarWitness Records
Aberrant / Nicaraguan Death Squad – split 7-inch MP3/download (sample then buy, if you can even find this)
You wouldn’t know it from the cheesy graphics on the Nicaraguan Death Squad side, but this split 7-inch with Aberrant — on red vinyl — is a brutal, beautiful death-metal mess.
Aberrant come first alphabetically, and so it goes … they fucking rule. Bursting forth with schooled riffs straight out of the death-, grind- and black-metal persuasions, Aberrant out-oink Pig Destroyer and pound Cattle Decapitation‘s meat. So vicious is their side you’d almost think this was christian metal …
It’s like the entire Corrosive Recordings catalog (Blues, Harlots, Veil Of Maya — named for a Cynic song — was tossed into a barrel with old flea-ridden fish guts, Indian‘s last record, Lord Mantis (also their latest) and Bolt Thrower and allowed to fester until a flesh-pink monster emerged from the putrid pile of filth.
Blast-beats, foreboding Morbid Angel-aka-classic riffs — but interrupted every 10 seconds or so via another randomly pummeling passage — screaming redolent of everything from Cannibal Corpse (another major influence on the guitars) to standard grind-core vocals to Unsane-ish yelling and hissing. A lot of squealing, too.
I’d mention the bass playing but I’m not 100 percent sure I’m hearing even a hint of bass, save as an underlying force the guitars use to fly higher. But it’s there.
Almost forgot: There’s a flipside, Nicaraguan Death Squad’s “A Shared Madness.” I’ll try to retain attention but Aberrant won’t wash easily. “A Shared Madness” is, like its partner mentioned above, a grind-core monster with other considerations taken, including — unless my record player sucks balls — a distant fog of sound effects and heavily layered vocals.
Nothing too crazy, but in the world of Metal, where imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I’ll take all the originality I can get (don’t get me wrong here — there’s all sorts of innovation going on in metal, but there’s also a lot of reverence for repetition with few new wrinkles, something I can only get behind so enthusiastically … ).
This could be two singers, as there seems to be a call-and-response going on here. Then again, double-tracking is another metal habit, so I won’t make any assumptions. I will mention, however, that Nicaraguan Death Squad are from Denver, Colo., and thus receive allegiance from me because they’ve been together, apparently, since 1993.
That’s a long time to be kicking it. Props.
