Intestinal - The Rottening

 

INTESTINAL - The Rottening (HELLTHRASHER - CD 2012)

Old styled death metal band from Sweden. Yeah, I know exactly what you may say now: “AGAIN?!!”. It is the fact that the number of bands from around the globe, which decided to play this style – not just in the Swedish vein, but old school death metal in general – has grown into amazing number. But myself, I’m not going to complain on that as I do fuckin enjoy many, many of these bands and I can honestly say this time this wave of new bands brings a high quality along with the quantity. Intestinal from Finspång (wherever that is he, he) is not such a new group actually, as I’ve been enjoying their debut album already a couple of years ago – it was “Human Harvest”, released in 2010 by WM PSYCHO Records. Seems like Intestinal is really fond of the Polish labels, as this time they’ve signed a deal with Hellthrasher Productions. Cool! Anyway, I know that many of you may be sick already of all those new bands, which resurrect the ancient spirit of death metal, but I dare to say that a real maniac is able to distinguish the gold from shit and good albums from bad albums. In case of Intestinal’s “The Rottening” I can assure you we’re dealing with a worthy and killer band.

I was actually looking forward to hear something new from Intestinal for some time. The debut album was really OK, maybe too mediocre and nor effective enough in many fragments, but as overall I think this was a good slab of raw and filthy death metal. “The Rottening” though is a huge step forward for the band, I can see a great progression when comparing both albums and I mean this in every aspect. The front cover is just superb and would make an early Cannibal Corpse incarnation jealous. Just look at this demonic massacre… fuckin slaughter, with lots of blood and hook in a cunt. The production for the album is also top notch and absolutely perfect for such kind of death metal devastation. It is old styled and dirty, but has an enormous dose of energy and a powerful sound; I especially like this sound of guitars, which is almost like from a handbook “how to sound evil and nasty and 666% old school”. And with the great sounding drums, the whole production of “The Rottening” is almost perfect for this kind of playing.

Intestinal do not discover anything with their music. It is rather standard old styled death metal, one which takes in equal measures the Swedish style of the likes of Grave, Carnage plus some newer bands like Demonical, Facebreaker and Ribspreader (and maybe also some other Rogga’s bands) and adds to that the American archaic style of Autopsy, early Death albums and maybe also a bit of horrifying Repulsion vibe. But the effect is amazingly good. I love the riffing here, it is splendid and just as it should be – “take no enemies, just rip the guts out and crush the skulls”. The music is tight and has a great atmosphere, there’re plenty of fast parts, but also many slower bits, which will crush you into the ground immediately. The songs are very even, without any boring fillers, everything is just straight in your damn face and has one purpose only – to massacre. And to be honest I have nothing against that… I do recommend you Intestinal then a lot, get this album right now.

PS. With all my regrets, I will not interview Intestinal, even though I would love to. But well, the truth is I already sent them some questions a couple of years ago and never got them answered. Which is a shame, but at least I know now not to waste my time again.

Final rate: 87/100