$LAMUARY 2025 – Week 1

I can say there is a real disconnect between the samples and the music, sometimes. Why slam bands sometimes think it's a good idea pulling the most disturbing real world sample out of a drawer to put into their slam album is beyond me. Yes, the sample is somewhat distressing, but it serves to open an album comprised of the sounds of someone burping so hard that the microphone peaks over guitars that sound as though they are constructed from low-grade tin cans. Cystic Epidermal Pestilence is the ideal album to start Slamuary on, as it encapsulates the experience perfectly: It fucking blows.
Rating: 3/10

I get it when deathcore bands call themselves technical death metal. I get it when metalcore bands call themselves melodic death metal. I get it when they call themselves groove metal instead of hot garbage, even. What I don't get, is how rebranding one incredibly niche subgenre — beatdown hardcore — to another incredibly niche subgenre — slam — has any commercial advantage. I could give World of Malice the benefit of the doubt and say that they used the slam tag to highlight their more extreme than usual vocal performance. However, I won't do that — because when if not now, during this most holy of seasons, do I get to be a smarmy asshole without repercussions?
Rating: 5/10

Someone should hire Thomas Meeker, the one man behind Viroplasm to be their drummer right now. With the rhythmic guitar shuffles that snake into slams against creative and snare-leading fills that you might hear in a band like Disgorge, Vesicles of Contagion (which is a compiled and remastered version of previous recent demos), finds an ease in making filth palatable. However, it does not do much in the way of changing that base Disgorgeous sound save for adding a little more goregrind filtering over the already murky, chirping vocals. So, again, someone do Mr. Meeker a favor and put him behind the kit of your next audience-reaching brutal endeavor. You won't be disappointed. You may be disappointed if you go into Vesicles of Contagion looking for anything more than a quick flush of snazzy death metal violence, though.
Rating: 4/10

Note to all slam bands out there, you don't have big choruses. If you do, you probably wouldn't be a slam band. Visceral Explosion doesn't know this though. Well, I presume they know that they are a slam band, at least. However, they do not know that they do not need to write songs like regular chorus-based music does, unless they had the riffs or hooks to back it. Sanguineous Hymns for Disembowelment does not though. Playing Fatuous Rump, or any variety of Larry Wang project, only gets you so far into the possibilities of this niche pocket of enjoyment, even for Larry Wang himself. At at least Wangmaster Cricket Burp has more diverse vocal elements than this guy. Sanguineous Hymns is never embarrassing, but it also never compels you to finish any of its overlong, reprisal-based endeavors. Just end on a slam, damnit.
Rating: 3/10

Spectrum leveling bass pulses? Check (ow). Programmed poorly and produced even more poorly "drums"? Check (ugh). Vocals that capture a reckless performance that finds equal play in pitch-shifting and extreme technique? Also check (technique questionable). Folks, this is gorenoise, not slam. No song on SPINKICKING BOMBDROPPING DEATHCORING LOBOTOMY METAL has any sort of coherent direction. It's easy to harp on bands in the goregrind or slammy lane for being too formulaic, but at least a formula is a structure. So then, is Jan Gonzalez an avant-garde leaning savant or just in need of a forced stay at a correctional facility? Listen and answer for yourself, but I won't be giving this any more of my time, even if the thrashy cuts "bvampyre-006" and "Embrace Your Stardust" hold a grindy promise. Ease up on the shitposting, Jan, you just might have some good in you. It's not that blackgazing "Epilogue" though.
Rating: 1/10

Is it fair to say that an eight minute x-grind record is underdeveloped? A quick glance at Fetal Fist Fuck's discography to this point suggests that between their highly bitcrushed guitar tone, booming industrial influence, and vampyric vocal viciousness, they can churn out diverse and reliable work in the cybergrind(ish) realm. The lo-fi buzz and high end hiss holds the same appeal as chiptune music or some dungeon synth, and with song lengths all around one minute, From the Grave is an easy intro to these sounds. However, just about everything here finds its base around the same riff and progression — intros aside, it's, more or less, the same song six times. I respect the effort, but can't really get behind it, though some of the lead tones stoke a tiny smile.
Rating: 4/10

At thirteen short-form tracks, nothing about Into Depravity appears long at first by goregrind standards. But with a dedicated energy set to low BPM slammage and only momentary bursts of speed from breakcore runs and double-kick swells, Septic Karnage struggles to be interesting for even a few bars. Playing around with the drum programming naturalness for a few tracks is a nice touch, and adds a swerving anti-groove to tracks like "Hatsune Miku Flesh Gang Master" and "Cosplayer's Skull Rape". But these small touches — including the classically belched emanations of a Larry Wang guest spot — on an otherwise slog of an album can't save it as a whole. Some of this sounds like shitty AI-generated progressions as well.
Rating: 2/10