Do you think that death metal got too smooth and technical, not forgetting nice and dapper? There have been so many evolutionary paths since early 1980s, for sure. Some bands dig it like it was: Purely unattractive piece of muck, fiercely rubbed in listeners' faces. However, some bands are more adventurous and do mix old and new. Sometimes these new "experiments" can still, positively speaking, end up on the mucky side of things.

Enter Scottish quartet Cancerous Womb. Having been actively providing some violent defilement service since 2008, they now have their debut album done, after an EP and a 5-side split, respectively from 2009 and 2011. 'Born of a Cancerous Womb' is your order of juicy corpse worms, with battery acid to swallow'em up. And man, you'll be wriggling when you're reveling it. But your level of pleasure depends on it, if you want some djent with filthy death metal or not. But either way, this makes you wriggle.

Cancerous Womb's death metal barbarism is rather similar to US gore maniaxxx Exhumed's, Welsh vandals Desecration's, as well as Belgian butchers Aborted's. It's gory, punky and scurvy. This also oozes of newer Napalm Death stylings here and there. Death metal riffs are about fast stitching and slicing, and the drum beats are pounding and brisk. Some open-string chords add colder touch at times. The more up-to-date feeling in the music is caused by aforementioned djent-ics, which are a big part of CW's sound. When it's time to do djent, it is about torsion and bluntness. Death metal and djent hardly happen together, but it seems like they were hard things to truly alloy. That's not saying, that the music is patchy, because it really isn't. There are a few lead guitar parts to enliven the music, and I wouldn't mind if there was more of them. See, there are parts that are very catchy, but also parts that kind of shake off a listener. CW utilize a lot of tempo changes, and therefore their music is erratic, if not as far as being chaotic. This isn't a very suitable platter for background listening, because if you do listen to this like that, soon you'll be asking "what did happen a minute ago in this song?!"

While sounding nasty, the band definitely are good players. Here, technicality and intensity meet, but also groove and dirtiness. The rhythm section presents a huge amount of beats and tempo changes, that are inviting to headbang. The bass does its job as it should: It backfills both the guitars and the drums. The vocals are animal; main style, which is powerful low growling, is accompanied by variety of growls. The production is forceful and quite defined, vivid.

Cancerous Womb are doing their kind of death metal, which is about gore. It's heavily coloured with djent and grindcore elements. While 'Born of a Cancerous Womb' is a reasonable showcase of their power and possibilities, they still have a lot to upgrade. But they do have the tools.

Rating: 7 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
03/26/2014 21:35