Abscess

Like a grotesque, barely-alive human crawling out of a burning pit of tar, here comes Abscess, out of the remains of death metal legends Autopsy and Hexx. Abscess cranks out 33 minutes of fairly repulsive sounding, gory death metal that's devoid of any sort of melody, structure or hook, the way it should be, I guess. With song titles like "Rusted Blood," "Ratbag" and "Madness and Parasites," I was expecting more of a gore-core beating, another bloody stab at creating Necroticism, but Tormented is fairly straight-up, old school death metal with a touch of stinking putrefaction for good measure. While I usually frown upon bands still creating the sounds of death metal's yesterday, Abscess has a certain enthusiasm about it that makes this an enjoyable listen, like you can tell these guys are pretty much serious about this sort of thing. The cover art looks like it should, the production sounds muddy and diseased, like it should, and while I don't have lyrics to reference, you get the idea from the song names. As the sounds of "Madhouse at the End of the World" close down the proceedings a brief half an hour later, I'm thinking they know what they're doing, as making this disc any longer would have totally ruined it. Good work guys, now back to your caves.