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It says something about the scene in general when a band's promo sheet has to list them as 'old-school death metal'. I mean, do we have so many subgenres that just saying 'Death Metal' is not enough? Sigh. I guess not, as there are so many mutations of the sound that now no band can call themselves just Death Metal – they have to add an adjective. Mutilation are a Polish band who really are digging right back down to the roots of the genre, ignoring the Gothenburger sound as well as the tech stylings of the modern US scene.

I really like this album a lot. Mutilation have released 3 albums, and if the other 2 are this good I want them too. The song titles may not impress, and the band name is about as generic as it gets, but this is indeed old-styled crushing Death Metal slayage hearkening back to the days of Possessed or early Death. There's quite a bit of Swedish DM influence here too, as a lot of these tunes are midpaced with some groove to them, but what I like about this band is they are all about the riff – heavy, crunchety riffs that you can't help but air-guitar to while your head bangs. Yes, the vocals are a very standard Deathgrowl, and yes the drum recording is a bit tinny, but the guitar tone is thick and heavy as a bag of bricks, and the riffs are hellaciously cool. The songwriting is really sharp, and has enough variation and time-shifts to keep from getting dull. This album is a nice, fat 45 minutes that feels more like 30, as you just don't want to riffage to stop.

For good old Death Metal in the Fleshcrawl/Dismember/Suffocation mode with no gimmicks except for killer fucking songs, Mutilation are definitely a band to check out. This is just a really fucking good album, and I can't pick favorite tracks since every one crushes. I would highly recommend this to Death fans of all stripes, as this is what Death Metal is all about.