Winter is coming, you can feel it creaking and crackling just over the horizon like a pensioner who’s slipped on the ice. Its icy tendrils are starting to slip inside your warm carcass, stroking your cosy innards in a fiery cold embrace, as daylight and sunshine, gives way to pale grey skies and a miserable slide towards the impending birthday of the Nazarene. And in the spirit of bonhomie that that intro ushers in, we’re off to the baking deserts of New Mexico, Albuquerque and new kids on the block Feed The Corpses To The Pigs (FTCTTP) who having formed in 2019, unleash this, their debut album unto the masses. To honest, I hadn’t heard of this band before they popped up into my inbox, and given their band name, their ludicrous over the top monikers (which I have copied and pasted from the press notes for reading pleasure – Lucas “Torture Pig” Boron (bass and vocals), Bill “Slaughter Pig” Dierker (lead guitar), Shawn “Death Pig” Fink (guitars and vocals and Eli “Murder Pig” Perea on drums), I would say that my expectations were on the shittier side of high. But, as they say, you shouldn’t judge a book by its human flesh cover. But, before I segue off into the review, I will question what’s the point in the above nom de plumes if not to set a certain genre expectation in a listener’s minds eye. Of course, it’s a deliberate ploy, same thing with their band name which is going to lead you to expect another tawdry entry into the torture, goregrind, piggy squeal, horror film sample MO that bands such as Parasitic Ejaculation, Visceral Disgorge and a thousand others, where style may well very win over substance.
But rather surprisingly, once you peel back the bloody bed sheets, rather than discovering a beheaded and defiled corpse, writhing in a maggot infested soup (see I can do it too), you are going to uncover what is a rather fine album that if you can ignore some of the more on the nose genre tropes that pepper it’s running time (yes the incessant samples from films and news programmes etc.). But I am dwelling on the negatives and so let’s dive in. It’s so wickedly confusing that it lifts you off your feet, spins you round and invites you to play pin the eyeball on the corpse. The best way I can really describe this album, is to liken it to a musical buffet but rather than stale scotch eggs and corned beef sandwiches, you get the great and the good from all metal genres. Listening to this album is akin to putting your favourite top 100 metal albums of the last 30 years and putting your device on shuffle. Now, I understand this sounds like a lazy assed review, where the reviewer (me) simply hasn’t listened to the album enough to get a firm grasp on what it is and what it’s trying to accomplish. Well, I hear you, but believe me when I say, I have listened to this album at least half a dozen times, and I am led to the same conclusion every time. What I can’t work out though, is, is this is a masterstroke and the band have decided to cover all heavy musical bases to appeal to as broad as musical base as possible OR, is it that band have struggled with their own musical identity and have acted like a giant metal fanged magpie in the face of not being able to suitably craft and mould their own musical identity?
I for one, am happy to give FTCTTP the benefit of the doubt here. There is so much going on though, it takes some unpicking but in the interests of brevity, let me precis. Album opener ‘Separate’ sounds like precision tooled Heartwork era Carcass and as such, you have a feeling of stability, and you know where you are as we crash into next track ‘Ghost of Winter’ which is in a similar vein. Well played, crisp death metal with barked/growled vocals. But from here in in, things get weird, as the band segue into almost punky, Entombed like riffs, which slows down the double bass crescendo as epic guitar solos soar into view. The next couple of tracks, spill out into almost Black Metal territory before everything goes back on itself and we’re in ‘So Far, So Good..’ era Megadeth via a soupcon of Alice In Chains (if fronted by Abbath) . It’s as schizophrenic (from a musical style perspective), as I have heard for years BUT, despite the haphazard and myriad of musical touchpoints, it’s really, enjoyable. The playing is excellent, the vocals are beefy, strong, and hugely impressive and it comes together by album’s end. It’s a ballsy record that delivers on the brutality scale, being equal parts, Grind, Death, Black, Thrash and everything in-between. There’s something for everyone on this album, and despite the trite genre trappings the band have decided to drench themselves in, this is a very decent album indeed and bodes well for their future endeavours.
(7.5/10 Nick Griffiths)
Leave a Reply