Review Summary: Bathing in the essence of classic old school death metal.
Death metal has seen a huge uptick in experimentation over the past decade and a half or so. Starting with death metal titans Ulcerate expanding the sound with super dense atmospheres and sludgy riffs. Then you have bands like Imperial Triumphant taking that glorious, dissonant carnage and throwing in some jazz for good measure. The sound of pure, old school death metal has kind of gone by the wayside. Especially when the 90s were full of bands that stood for nothing but pure riffage. Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel and Deicide are a few names that come to mind when I think of straight up rifftastic OSDM. Necrovision is a newer death metal band from Texas and their new EP
The Gouging Process is the embodiment of that old school sound.
This EP is 4 songs and clocks in at just over 13 minutes, so how much of an impact could it possibly make? Well riffs know no time limit my friends and this EP is full of them. Necrovision opt for mostly a mid paced affair with the chunky riffs pouring over you like tar filling the cracks of a pothole filled road. The title track in particular is memorable for its groovy and semi-melodic riffage while still maintaining that feeling that the band just went and rolled around in the sewer before recording. The vocals are putrid gurgles from 6 feet under yet are still pretty clear and decipherable.
The Gouging Process is a quick, fun and tongue in cheek death metal EP that will get your head banging and your fists shaking. Death metal was built on whiskey soaked riffs, shouts at the devil and pure fun and shock value. This EP gives you all of those qualities in a very short amount of time. It doesn’t matter how long a release is as long as the essence and quality is there and Necrovision have certainly achieved that here. Hopefully a full length album isn’t far behind!
