Review Summary: It's so much more than just eating babies bro, you have no idea.
Ok, so this is a slam album, of the "filthiest" possible variety. The kind where people call the music "disgusting" and mean it as a good thing. Slow for the majority of the time, not as groovy and upbeat as some other slamming bands can be, with burped unintelligible vocals and pig squeals to convey the twisted horrors conjured up in the minds of these friendly Greeks. I definitely understand how the sum of the parts can create a certain appeal for some people, as otherwise there wouldn't be tons of similar bands popping up like mushrooms after rain all the time. Covidectomy, Toiletectomy, Neuralectomy... take your pick (not even kidding, all these bands exist, and they all sound pretty much the same).
But what really sells this album for me is the title, theme and presentation. Just check out that beautiful cover art - some maladjusted, overweight, basement-dwelling neckbeard with relentless conviction in his eyes, chowing down on some babies in the maternity ward - having previously eliminated all the staff, so as to not have any interruptions to this completely normal activity. One often might want to say "you can't make that *** up", but here you literally must make that *** up, because no one in real life has ever attempted to pull such a stunt. It seems so pure in its psychotic desire, and yet so absolutely extraordinary that one can't even imagine anyone actually harbor such fantasies in real life. And yet that's exactly the story that the title track of this opus,
Gluttonous Mastication of Embryonic Remnants tells us - one of many equally messed up scenarios, but this one definitely sticks out, even due to the choice of wording itself. The dude doesn't just want to eat a baby, he wants to
masticate it.
Gluttonously. I mean I sense a bit of an oxymoron here if I'm to be completely honest - it's important to chew your food properly, sure, but in case of compulsive, cannibalistic fantasies I would imagine the guy would want to swallow as fast as possible rather than you know... masticate. And yet masticate he does, gluttonously even, until his neckbeard-covered jaw can't take it anymore. What a rewarding resolution - just try to imagine what he'd tell the cops once apprehended after massacring the entire maternity ward and chowing down on all the young 'uns there. That's probably the true value of slam death metal right there - you can vicariously live through scenarios of such unimaginable depravity that they're just ridiculous, and would have zero chance of happening in the real world. I mean, the protagonist of the title track here makes Albert Fish look like Mahatma Gandhi, 'nuff said.
So yeah, if you're ready to fall into a pit of absolute filth and disgust that will make you doubt whether you're even capable of appreciating beauty anymore, this is an album for you. Brutal death metal is like a black hole, the deeper in you go, the harder it is to escape. At some point you cross the border of "palatable" - music that you can still enjoy as full-fledged music, rather than "ironically". But at some point, what's an "acquired taste, to be listened to sparingly" turns into "omg those St. Anger snares are sooo brutal". It's then that you know you've been lost. At that point, Embryectomy will be quite appealing, although it's still not quite as good as stuff such as
Subterranean Existential Warfare by
Diphenylchloroarsine - that album takes it a step further and really brings some artistry to this "filthy" and "disgusting" aesthetic. Otherwise, you might be best advised to stick to slam in a more palatable form with more "normal" vocals, so "cleaner" bands such as Ingested or perhaps the good ol' classic - Devourment.
