The Ravenous "Blood Delirium" CD
[Red Stream]
Here's the second record of gory, horror infested metal from this all-star project, whose lineup consists of Killjoy, Dan Lilker, and Chris Reifert, among others, whose résumés should fucking speak for themselves. Of course I don't really like this as much as most of the members' other musical endeavors, but it's alright. Especially if you like somewhat rugged old school death metal with hints of everything from Autopsy to the early Swedish pioneers in the genre. Expect moderately paced to fast riffing with a chunky and textured guitar tone, sick vocals that have a lot of throatiness, loose solos that focus on speed, etc. "Gore Whore" has more of a driving sort of hardcore/punk thing going on musically (think the modern take on Discharge), "Nightmares in a Damaged Brain" is a quick little track based around some discordant acoustic guitars and noisy distortion textures that actually sounds really cool, and "You Will be Eaten Alive" is basically ominous drums and fucked up vocals... so there's a few different things going on. I don't care for the samples they interject amidst the record, but they handle it alright I suppose. The recording is alright for what it is. I like the guitar tone a lot, but I do wish the bass had some more oomph to it. The vocals are sort of loud compared to the guitars, and in fact the drums seem to be barely out in front of the guitars as well, so I would totally turn the guitars up if I had my say, but oh well. The disc comes in a digipack, but I fucking hate most of the layout. Inside the digipack is a booklet, and the cover of the booklet is great, that should've been the outer sleeve of the digipack, but everything else is crap. Well, the handwritten lettering is cool, but the silly little gore illustrations stink, the multicolored letters are tacky and make no sense, and the front cover is terrible. Who the hell thinks it's a good idea to get a bunch of goofballs to smear blood on themselves and try to look all "gruesome" and "violent" like that? Shit, Exhumed knows how to do this stuff, but this looks like a bad joke... I'll pass. This looks like complete and utter garbage compared to their debut. Lyrics? Same boat: "Blistered scabs draining pus, Drawing flies into her cunt, Twisted mind ruined snatch, Death erect stuck in her crack..." No thanks. There's a CD-Rom video for "August Underground", but I'm not into much of that either. It's a lot of random footage, some stills, everything from live performances to raw horror movie stuff (some of which is actually cool), but it's just goofy overall. Some of these songs are good and there are some great riffs, but I find the disc to be a little boring overall. Guys with such a stature should be capable of far better than this, regardless of whether or not they're just having fun. (6/10)
Running time - 35:28, Tracks: 11
[Notable tracks: Gore Whore, Spawned by Ghoul Insemination]
Red Stream - http://www.redstream.org

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