Review: Desensitized/Peach-Her “Split” CD

Desensitized (The Netherlands) kicks off this split with five tracks of death/grind under the heading of "Bought Beauty". Their style isn't too fast, there are a lot of good midpaced riffs and the vocals are gruff screams/grunts. Sometimes they get into some groovy sort of rhythms but they'll always balance that stuff with old school thrash/death runs. I'm definitely not blown away by their songwriting, but they do keep things short but sweet, so it's not a boring set of material, it's just not very engaging. "Black Gold" starts out with a solidly crunchy riff that stands out a little based on feel alone, and "Bought Beauty" is a little more energetic in its use of speed (i.e. straying from basic tremolo picking), but for the most part it's a consistent 11 minutes of material. The recording is sort of raw, but that doesn't bother me too much because the mix is solid. I'm not making out much bass and the guitar tone is somewhat dry, but the drums sound okay and the evenness of everything lets them get by. Peach-Her (France) follows with 10 tracks of oddball material (they've titled their half "Gastrophobia") with a major sense of humor and an unfortunately terrible recording that ruins some otherwise amusing works. Some of their humor isn't my thing (nor is their silly band name), but their mix of straight up death metal riffs with quirky math metal rhythms, hardcore breakdowns, occasional spurts of plunky slap bass, midpaced dissonance, and a number of other styles is actually pretty effective in such concise frameworks. The problem is that it all sounds like shit. The vocals are burly grunts that sound decent, as does the percussion, but the guitar tone (which is loud) is fucking pathetic. I'm talking completely hollow and dry with no thickness or force whatsoever, so it's totally choppy and breaks up all the time during the faster riffing. And the bass is almost inaudible, so there's a significant lack of low-end. I honestly expected this band to suck, but with a better sound this could be a far better set of songs that I would actually enjoy. "My Fork is Poltergeist Part 1" is a brief acoustic track with humorous spoken vocals, "Too Young to Die" is a little groovier and more midpaced while "Brain Ice Cream" is faster and has some awesome discordant passages, and a couple of tracks have guest vocal appearances from members of Inhumate and the Blockheads. The last track is a bonus "audiotrauma" remix of "Too Young to Die" by Sonic Area and Acrylik, which basically sounds like distorted, filtered, chopped up, spliced, and reassembled bits of the original track, of course. The layout's not that great, but gives each band their own half (three panels) of the booklet, so each group has their own separate cover art (an odd decision) and information panels. Desensitized includes lyrics, and contrary to their disgusting artwork of mutilated breasts (suggesting typical gore grind, but I think they're photos of botched plastic surgeries), the songs deal with extreme justice over violent criminals, countries warring for oil, and the insecurities and arrogance associated with plastic surgery, with only minimal lines hinting at the gory aspects. Peach-Her just includes a few images and thanks lists and stuff like that. I hate to give this a 5/10 because Peach-Her, while immature, writes good songs, but their recording is just awful. I could never listen to these songs repeatedly because I can't handle how shitty the guitar tone is. And Desensitized? Well, they're just not that interesting. I've heard worse, but they don't hit me. Oh well. You can't win 'em all. Maybe next time.