I don’t really know at what point something can be deemed as classic. If you love an album, book, film etc straight away can you start hailing it as a masterpiece or a classic? I guess it’s more of a time thing, anything that stands the test of time is probably classic, and anything which forever exceeds is legendary. Why am I talking about classics though? Well because today we’re talking about Aborted.

This Belgium tour de force formed in 1995, and in 2003 they released the hugely influential and revered album Goremageddon: The Saw And The Carnage Done. After that it pretty much became a drip feed of solid albums, each praised highly amongst the Death Metal and Grind communities. Their recent albums have also proved enjoyable and as such we come to their eleventh full length, Maniacult from Century Media Records.

It just wouldn’t be an album by almost any band nowadays if there wasn’t a slightly pointless intro track, Verderf has us covered on that (although at least it is actually somewhat of a song). Thankfully the title track soon follows, the Deathgrind antics follow with a titanic vocal performance and satisfying range spewing from Sven De Caluwé. It gets a little melodic at points too, pretty reminiscent of Cattle Decapitation, which is never a bad thing really. The drumming and vocals in Impetus Odi only goes to solidify my Cattle Decap suspicions, none the less another crushing song.

Jumping into the halfway point of the album is A Vulgar Quagmire, it continues the trend of dynamic Deathgrind, well written and enticing, this is sure to be an album to please fans and newcomers alike. Sadly Verbolgen is an interlude (yawn), it really kills the pace of the album, nonetheless the actual songs surrounding it are still great. Drag Me To Hell is a particularly epic affair. That opening riff is full of huge Metal prowess, I love this kind of thing dropped into an otherwise Grind heavy release, it always works so damn well. The rest of the release plays out well with closer I Prediletti: The Folly Of The Gods serving as a strong conclusion.

Aborted fall into that ‘old reliable’ category, they’re always on point and always creative if only slightly. They tend to play with an array of themes and Maniacult really shows the growth that Aborted have had over the years. Truth be told it’s probably one of my favourite albums from them in recent times. A sort of conclusive amalgamation of influences pooled together from they’re albums since The Necrotic Manifesto, great work.

(8/10 George Caley)

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