And as we dove deeper into the sewers, it was only pain we found. Where the hammers slam wildly and the vocals are as guttural as a bowel movement, only the insane would go. This is our quest to cover all slam released in January 2024—Slamuary—a vain pursuit and a waste of time, a testament to the absurdity of human behavior. Be it goregrind, brutal slamming death metal, goregrind, brutal slamming goregrind, gorenoise or any other number of totally distinguishable microgenres—as long as it slams, it counts.
THIS IS SLAMUARY!
Scat-Goat
Child Cemetery are an early slam "highlight". With dumb, almost nu metal grooves, an enjoyable albeit not too stupid snare and vocals right from the gutter, it's worth swinging some hammers to. The album is especially fun whenever it dips into groovy goregrind territory.
Rating: (low) 6/10
The classic slam record that veers too closely to beatdown and death to really bring the violence and transgression needed to sell the style. At the risk of turning into the punk rock mba here: if it sounds like a Lorna Shore fan could listen to it, I probably don't want it. Competent on a technical and performance level, however.
Rating: (low) 5/10
Painfully short, messy in production and not particularly groovy. I am prone to forget most slam albums within a week, but I am doubtful if I can tell you anything about this one two days from now.
Rating: (low) 4/10
I am partial to the ero-guro style of artwork, even if it as cheaply and poorly done as this. This is no Itatrain Worship though; it's not even UwU level. Vocals that feel both artificial and weak, muddy production and incomprehensible song structures—this is as bad as a competently played album can be.
Rating: 3/10
Trans-dimensional Being of Extreme Brain Damage
Abomination Putridus wear a cheaply symphonic, kind of industrial bend enough to embody their space-y aspirations. However, frankly, Neo Slam Future sounds like shit. Its synth layers collide with an overblown kick, creating unpleasant distortion to the point that the guitar layers and really all the sounds that aren't the persistent burp vox fuse together like a Strapping Young Lad song played at half speed from a phone speaker that's still wet from a fresh dunk in a toilet. It's not pleasant background noise, it's not pleasant active noise, and it's way too long. Some riffs though.
Rating: 3/10
Divinite Hive have been on the scene for only about a year and in that short span have released, this newest Universal Inversion included, nine quips of low-oxygen slamming death metal. For those unfamiliar, the self-branded identity of 'space slam' includes the typical slam riffs and grooves modulated by phaser-esque warbles alongside a programmed pummel of gravitationally-challenged snare. It scrapes, slams, and shuffles as it ought to, even if not entirely as novel as it would hope. No reason to come back when the next batch of tunes is four to eight weeks away.
Rating: (high) 5/10
Let's face it, slam these days sees tons of poseur bleed-over from adjacent genres like beatdown, deathcore, and goregrind. Vortexectomy, fortunately has the unique vision to free slam from its cage of being music at all, instead envisioning this newest opus, TLC:AIL4R as a modern sound collage of outsider genres. While lesser bands are busy simply trying to out-chug and out-bree each other, this visionary act fuses dungeon synth and crunk ("OG Dvngeon Crvnk"), experimental jazz ("Deficency of Carcinogeembryonalogenic Antigen"), the world's most penetrating snare ("学習欠陥", "Vortexectomy Theme"), and a re-interpretation of a Dying Fetus classic as a wild fusion of Austrian folk and nightcore. There's not a moment that this sophomore outing presents as listenable, advisable, or cognitively competent, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
Rating: AOTY/10
