London, England based gore death metallers Basement Torture Killings are here to offer you a painful musical experience I believe compared to a spiked butt plug torture. For 30 minutes, they shall slash, rip and maim your ears with this aural lobotomy procedure.

If only this, their second full-length platter, wouldn't feature those, admittedly insanely rapid, drums that do sound like a bloody drum machine... I do not know if it's one of these damned electronic contraptions, or is it just to the hilt triggered drums played, but it does sound mechanical and gives this some industrial edge. They are also louder than any other stuff in the mix. Me, I don't like the way they were achieved. How about the rest, then?

The album features loads of hammered riffs played with ripping guitar tones, that are accompanied by gory and warped ones. Then there are these technical and reverbed guitar solos, that aren't made to stick to one's mind, but might still be cool as heck. Mostly, the songs aren't catchy, but more like manic and shortish earfucks. They tend to go from a riff to another, or into a guitar solo.

Due to more or less constant kick drum playing, the bass levels surely are audible, but it doesn't mean that the bass guitar work is easily heard, no. In a nutshell, BTK play brutal, fast death metal with a lot of grindcore elements attached. If a molested corpse of a rancid whore filled with cum from Exhumed, Impaled, Gorerotted, Desecration, Repulsion and Carcass was making metal music, it would sound like this stuff. And throw some insane nursery rhymes in, too, without forgetting those horrible samples (meaning, in a good way)... It's nothing new, but it's pretty darn extreme.

The vocals are rather convincing. Nothing but growls, low or high pitched ones, are delivered in turns or simultaneously by two vocalists. Very powerful they all are, and totally disgusting. The lyrics are about torturing and killing human beings. The band members are also big fans of serial killers. Well, you can see that from how they look like...

It's not easy at all to unearth some working compositions here. It's okay as short bursts, but my ears scream for silence after listening to this in a single sitting. I find this much, much more interesting than most of any one-riff grindcore songs, but yeah, this isn't for easy listening.

Rating: 5½ (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
04/29/2014 19:46