If there's one quality of Witch Vomit that's foremost, it's their fanatic devotion to all things evil in death metal. That singular vision has informed their seething sophomore album, Buried Deep in a Bottomless Grave.
Like a killer returning to the scene of their crime, Witch Vomit re-tread the unhallowed ground of Swedish death metal they tilled on their last release, 2016's A Scream From the Tomb Below. This time around, they've dialled back the chainsaw tone, giving listeners more clarity to experience their sinister riffs. Killer cuts like "From Rotten Guts" entice with serpentine melodies akin to Dismember, as well as the punishing Entombed-esque riffs that you would expect. "Despoilment," another banger on this album, even has a hint of Morbid Angel in the intro riff.
Despite starting out strong, the album gets bogged down by underdeveloped songs like title track "Buried Deep in a Bottomless Grave" and the instrumental "Squirming in Misery." Even serviceable songs like "Dripping Tombs" and "Fumes of Dying Bodies" aren't varied enough to keep the album interesting, and for an album this short, underwhelming material is catastrophic. Ideally, it should be all-killer-no-filler, like a Nails record, but instead, Buried Deep feels like it's full of dead weight.
Buried Deep is niche, harkening to a time when death metal was reaching new depths of depravity. However, the majority of this album is not compelling enough to capture that era, or to mark its own path.
(20 Buck Spin)Like a killer returning to the scene of their crime, Witch Vomit re-tread the unhallowed ground of Swedish death metal they tilled on their last release, 2016's A Scream From the Tomb Below. This time around, they've dialled back the chainsaw tone, giving listeners more clarity to experience their sinister riffs. Killer cuts like "From Rotten Guts" entice with serpentine melodies akin to Dismember, as well as the punishing Entombed-esque riffs that you would expect. "Despoilment," another banger on this album, even has a hint of Morbid Angel in the intro riff.
Despite starting out strong, the album gets bogged down by underdeveloped songs like title track "Buried Deep in a Bottomless Grave" and the instrumental "Squirming in Misery." Even serviceable songs like "Dripping Tombs" and "Fumes of Dying Bodies" aren't varied enough to keep the album interesting, and for an album this short, underwhelming material is catastrophic. Ideally, it should be all-killer-no-filler, like a Nails record, but instead, Buried Deep feels like it's full of dead weight.
Buried Deep is niche, harkening to a time when death metal was reaching new depths of depravity. However, the majority of this album is not compelling enough to capture that era, or to mark its own path.
