WBCI recognised the sender name on this envelope and assumed and happily prepared myself for a new Project Failing Flesh album. I was right in one respect as the disc had been sent by Tim Guttierez of industrial, experimental thrash act PFF but this was a new project of his. Collaborating with bassist David Atkinson and utilising I assume his brother Kevin Guttierez on drums for this session we are told that this outfit was more of a “throwback” to the stuff that Tim grew up on. One listen enforced the idea that this is very much the sort of thing that many of us would have grown up on. It has an old school death feel to it right down to the gaudy cover art and spiky (but readable if well versed in this sort of thing) band logo.

Four tracks are laid out here and pressing play makes another thing very clear and that is that the production has a powerful punch to it. No mouldy old crappy demo quality here but musically this could certainly be from 20 years ago.

Thick guitars, chunky bass and thudding drums all power out the speakers along with raspy, craggy vocals as Red Visions throws the horns up. Think a bit of Autopsy, Entombed, Celtic Frost and even some Aura Noir and a death, thrash, punk rottenness coursing through its ugly veins and you are going to be in about the right place. Slowing to a cadaverous crawl and dragging you down into a sticky bass heavy morass it suddenly limbers back up to mid-pace putting the bite firmly in. The shrill guitar chord that lets the song finally rest in pieces is suitably harsh and discordant. ‘Defaced’ follows and again oozes out slowly and somewhat nastily along with vocals that sound like they are gurgled out by obscene scented breath of a necrophiliac who has just crawled out a coffin after chewing on guts. Nice!

Melody is quite accessible to this but probably the catchiest number is “We Are Nothing.” The punky edge comes through and the song is more upbeat (no make that deadbeat) with the simple catchy nihilistic chorus bouncing away through the skewering guitar riffs. Finishing things off we have ‘Untrue Weapons’ to which I have to ask are they rubber? The bass sound here has a nice springy sproing to it like being hit around the mush with a latex axe. From here we bound into the sort of neat racket that is a bit like Darkthrone wrecking in a garage to all their idols.

Yep it is obvious that With Burning Contempt have a lot of bands that they grew up listening to that they want to pay tribute to and they do it well here. I can only hope that they do a Bloodbath and take it further as a full length would go down like dismembered body parts through an industrial blender

Free to download at the band camp site!

(Pete Woods 7/10) 

http://withburningcontempt.bandcamp.com

 https://www.facebook.com/WithBurningContempt