Gorerotted - A New Dawn For The Dead

*=Staff's pick	...And Everything Went Black Pain As Prelude To Death Nervous Gibbering Wreck Adding Insult To Injury Fable Of Filth Dead Drunk A Very Grave Business* Horrorday In Haiti Selection And Dissection Of Parts For Resurrection

Genre	Gore/Death Metal	Ben Goreskin	Vocals
Tracks	9	The Wilson	Guitar
Runningtime	34 Min.	Matthew	Guitar
Label	Metal Blade	Tim	Bass
Release	13 June 2005	Junko	Drums
Country	England	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	---

With two albums in their back (Mutilated In Minutes, 2001 and Only Tools And Corpses, 2003) and one split cd and one mini cd, Gorerotted are back to deliver yet another slob of blood and intestines in your face. The band has previously been ranked very high among gore metal bands and they were featured in the Terrorizer magazine "Gore Issue". The album Mutilated In Minutes went on to beat all albums by Cannibal Corpse, Mortician, Exhumed and the other usual suspects to come in at number 7 in the Gore Metal Album Top 20 of all time. Only Death, Autopsy, Carcass and Repulsion had higher-ranking albums.

I honestly thought this kind of music died sometime in the beginning of the 90's. In my early years there were quite some gore/grind/death metal spinning at my place (Napalm Death, Carcass, etc.) but where these bands later evolved, left their questionable first part of their career and actually got to play marvellous music, Gorerotted is still just making uncontrolled noise. The band have by now dropped most of the gory image from their early years and are now playing more straight death/grind metal with a more darker and ominious feeling and a more 'serious' approach, but I still don't give much for the result. This is supposed to mark a new beginning for the band and I can just hope that they will lose more and more of the blast beats and the chaotic arrangements in the future. The more, the better.

I get irritated and nervous when listening to this, as I feel it is messy and uncontrolled and the vocals that go from high pitched shouting to somewhat normal death metal ones are another factor that more than once make me fumble for the skip button on my remote control. What initially felt fresh and interesting quickly gets annoying. The times when they are decreasing the tempo and build it on heavy riffs it is quite good. Some riffs are actually very good. The stinking production does not allow any of it come to its fully right, however. The guitars and the rhythm section are thin and there is no juice in the drums whatsoever. With a better production, slower songs and way more of the 'light' vocals which are way better than the lousy growls, then we might be close to something interesting.

If you by now suspect that I am not so fond of this style of metal, you have guessed right. It is not really my cup of tea anymore, but when looking at it from a strictly objective point of view, I think this is a bit below the normal standards in the genre. You are a diehard fan of this genre, you say? Then pick the album up, by all means. You will not get disappointed. It has all you want and need, and they have in fact improved their musicianship in the right direction and everything is better than it once were. Just not good enough for me.

I just can't find what I once found in this music anymore unless it's made in a very, very good way and most important: with some style.

Production	Vocals	Compositions
4	4	4

Summary
4 chalices of 10 - Tommy