$LAMUARY 2025 – Week 2

The strange combination of album cover, song and album titles makes me feel like there is some cultural context I am missing. Something about this rubs me the wrong way, where I feel like this album has an agenda, existing as something more than an album, as a piece of propaganda — just a hunch. Luckily, an album that sounds like this would never reach an audience big enough to make any kind of real world change. While the band has some neat ideas, like the System of a Down-esque clean opening strums, no amount of creativity could ever save the classic sound of not turning the cab on after your ampsim. Bad volume leveling and a lack of musical identity round off a package of crap.
Rating: 4/10

The signs of an album not actually being slam are manifold. The cover looks like it has some degree of a budget behind it. The band name is not stupid enough. But most egregiously: The page mentions being a "multimedia conceptualization project". Now, I don't know what that means and I will not google it, either, but I know that no slamming sick horror freak would ever have the brain cells to think of something so pretentious. However, on a musical level, Mold Bunny are quite enjoyable, dishing out crusty hardcore with occasional beatdown leanings and lyrics entirely themed around rabbits (Redwall?). This is not necessarily one to avoid, if not brilliant, either.
Rating: 6/10

The most noteworthy thing about this self-titled effort is how it has an acoustic interlude. Otherwise, this is absolutely what I expect to discover in Slamuary: memey, badly produced slam made by musicians who refuse to take anything seriously. I am a great fan of not taking yourself seriously, but I would really prefer if a band shows some devotion to their craft. Overly loud production, underwritten songs and an over reliance on samples that, even in isolation aren't that funny, betray the fact that this was indeed made in a single night, only to be purchased by what looks like one of the musicians grandmother. My rating: balls/10.
Rating: 3/10

You remember that glorious feeling when you were but a wee lad, running around in the fall and finding a particularly crunchy leaf to step on? Well, slam bands recapture that feel occasionally by presenting us with the crunchiest of guitar tones, full with digital harshness, over-compression and hard clipping. Frustratingly, it seems like Truckstop Dickpill could make something that was actually not terrible, as the band has an above average level of variety to their riffing and vocals. Yet, they decided to choose memery instead, filling their album with movie samples that vaguely reference jews as a people. The band doesn't quite go so far as to serve up anything antisemitic for shock value (I think? Intent is hard to read here) and sit in an awkward spot where the band neither fails nor delivers hard enough.
Rating: 4/10

It is bound to happen every year, sooner or later. The deluge of meme slam, centered around a concept that is way funnier in the musicians head than it is in practice. Bad production, absurdly short songs and a general lack of ideas characterize this sub-sub genre of death metal. This one is themed around cats and while I am quite fond of feline friends, no amount of meow samples or adapted children's songs can save an album made hastily and without care. I sure hope that volume two will drop outside of Slamuary, as that is the only chance that I can avoid the followup to this stinky, kitty-litter crusted turd.
Rating: 3/10

Here at The Goat Review, we usually pride ourselves in making our reviews respectful towards the artist and we assume that no album is made bad on purpose and we are aware that every album has a person (or multiple) behind it. Slamuary is the exception to the rule, a belated Christmas present for ourselves and an opportunity to challenge all the negativity of the previous year into something (somewhat) productive, producing amusement and clicks alike. However, I don't quite have it in me to diss Resplendency today, as the product at hand seems completely uncynical. Internal Sociopathy is mostly a classic BDM album, albeit with gorier than usual vocals and shows promise at times. Some sections groove pleasingly and others produce nice hairpin turns. However, the album is also somewhat under-cooked, a tad short and badly produced. I've been there, making music in my bedroom and the album is simply put not a shitpost.
Rating: 5/10

Indulgence. Slam is, in many ways, musicians indulging in their worst and most base level tendencies. This can be good in the hands of a talented musician that knows how far he can take something and it can be bad if a musician does not know where the threshold for what constitutes good music actually lies. Pulsating Fermenting Whore could, with some tweaks, perhaps be a good slam album. Or at least an above average one. But the musician cannot help but indulge in his own worst tendencies, dragging out good bits until they become bad bits and using overlong samples that feel like in-jokes that few listeners will be able to pick up on. I had some fun, but I want more fun, I want to flail and mosh and commit atrocities. Vulvitis ultimately does not make me do that.
Rating: 5/10

The trappings of scatalogical slam and goregrind are that a clog will form when the humor of manipulated fart and flush samples run aged and crusty. As such, Fart Thrower hits best when leaning into its actual death metal roots to raise nostrils with whiffs of Death-penetrated melodies ("Crop-Dusting the Manager," "The Fentanyl Fold"). Piss Nuke also continues this act's delightful drippings of blowout bass-drops against backpacker beats and trip hop framings, all colored by the vocalist's filtered, flushed, and fried lyrical plungings ("Shit Your Pants," "Turdcenary"). Fart Thrower has, of course, done this more consistently with previous outings, and in Piss Nuke's high level of flatulent filler does its flow find an arresting impact.
Rating: 5/10

Goregrind can be, as the kids say, a vibe — even more so when of the groovy goregrind variety. Lavashitter goes for that vibe, running 'oompa oompa' riff patterns into the ground over flushed vocals, obnoxious snare, and often hilarious shit-themed samples (mostly from early 00s movies like Harold and Kumar "Battleshits" scene, Dumb and Dumberer "There's shit everywhere" scene). Of course, beyond the time-ticking that these samples and interchangeable grooves supply, there's really nothing to come back to with Scorching IBS. Well, except the hot steaming memory of a time you listened to an album with that art. Unfortunately, it hits more like a regrettable Taco Bell stool-squirter than the aftermath of a well-planned Indian buffet.
Rating: 3/10

Many of the lesser slam scraps we cover prolong an already hard-to-stomach experience with an unfunny intro or a awkwardly long sample in the middle of their album. Split in Half does not though, exploding right with chunky riffage into the warehouse nightmare of "Last Ink Ribbon", which hits like a chuggish trilling ripped right from the All Shall Perish playbook. Complete with dramatic sweep runs, meat-headed breakdowns, tricky hi-hat syncopation, and a deluge of tough guy soapbox sermons, Free Roaming Flesh owes a lot more to a time before the devolution of deathcore than it does to the modern slam scene. But that's ok because so too does Ingested, and that act doesn't seem to want to make good albums anymore. So give the rookies a chance. Get Split in Half.
Rating: 6/10

Italian newcomers Gutcake wear plainly the strong-armed, groovy Fulci influence, albeit without the camp of horror samples and accelerated to grind speeds. Aiming for the inherent absurdity-based psychedelia that pervades the gore and surrealism of bright-toned zombie worlds, Gutcake whips about multi-tracked gurgles and a tonal brightness that never lets up. It's a shame that the pit-churning grind of "Hung with His Own Entrails" and "Pastel de Tripa" never let groove morph into a brutish, half-time chromatic thrashing. This often jackhammering affair finds all too awkward of a flow for the tracks that do bring the hammers ("Into the Blood Mud," "Micrurus Mipartitus Fecalis") leaving me raw-reared and hobbling, but not in delight. Gutcake might get a second date if their next collection of brees and snorts finds a better balance between thrust and shuffle.
Rating: 5/10

Folks, we have a Larry Wang production! What does that mean? Vicious cricket-chirp beatboxing, wild and uncomfortable samples, and uncompromised slam. If you haven't the taste for the distastefully extreme, Wang and his wiles are likely not for you. Hemzeodysnexia presents a challenge even to those seasoned in the butcher block aesthetic that Wang inhabits though, opting to present a form of slamming brutal death metal re-imagined as a groove minced by choppy breakbeats and hip-hop samples. Reckless and itching for edgy humor, Aeroerotic Bloodplay Twincest Voyeurism just about succeeds more than it doesn't, functioning as a tearing proof of concept for its New York-based mastermind SP's glitch-slam fusion, only briefly addled by samples that don't repeat well. It's own hype is almost as hot as its blown-out 808 drops.
Rating: 5/10

Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, teach gym. And those who cannot do anything else play slam. Gloombringer takes this a step further and as, presumably, a one-man project without vocals, hires two other slam acts to provide vocals for this mini-release. Sometimes, a bedroom project like this warrants the talents of a hired gun to bring it to life, but Gloombringer is not one of those. Dismantling Existence is exactly the slam you would expect. And, ironically, its shortest track, which contains no vocals whatsoever, is the only one that doesn't overstay.
Rating: 3/10