Death is June - LACERATION : " I ERODE"

 The first song by this Bay Area Death Metal band makes it clear this album hinges on how much restraint the drummer can muster. He will blast under perfectly good grooves, giving the song the rushed feeling I dislike. They are middle of the road falling into the late 80s Morbid Angel feel mixed with a bit of Incantation. Technically Aerin Johnson is a capable drummer, but to play death metal you have to be so, not winning any prizes there, but his playing is pretty solid on "Vile Incarnate" and he allows the riffs to groove making it the most impressive song of the album's front end. This makes the question for the rest of the album what are these guys going to do that will establish a personality for themselves and make them a worthwhile musical entity unto themselves and not just a tribute to Tampa death metal. 

You can spout all the bullshit you want about music not being a competition or judging songs say it's just a matter of taste, but there are so many hours in a day, what makes this album worth listening to when that time could be invested in listening to a band like Gatecreeper or 200 Stab Wounds , who are both bands that have established themselves as being death metal bands at the top of their game. The instrumental interlude "Dreams of the Formless" reminds me of Megadeth's "In My Darkest Hour".  'Carcerality" gets to the meat of the matter placing them in a more brutal Cannibal Corpse-like sonic space. The rules that apply to Cannibal Corpse, whose entire discography I reviewed this month, are that you can be brutal, but you still need things like groove and dynamics to make your music worth listening to. When it comes to this song it begs the question, what is this giving me that I am not already getting from the Cannibal Corpse albums I already own?

"Strangulation By Hatred" is another straightforward beat down to your ears. The vocals remind me of Obituary in that they are still articulate enough to understand the lyrics which I appreciate. This song works well enough the wheel is not being reinvented by any means, but for generic death metal, it's entertaining. At two minutes in length "Impaling Sorrow" is a blast fest that gets to the point, but is one-dimensional hyper-aggression. With a cool riff midway, though the rule here is ...cool riffs alone does not a good song make. The title track finds them pouring on the speed for yet another blast, with only the thrashing riff smarts making this worthwhile. A minute and a half into the song they hit you with a pretty cool riff, that is done in a way that is not an exception to the previously stated riff rule, but an example of how you can use cool riffs to enhance songwriting rather than a replacement for,  I will give this album an 8.5, it benefits from when they lean into the thrash minded egregore of their hometown to deviate from standard death metal tropes. This drops July 26th on 20 Buck Spin. 

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