Death metal is meant to be ugly, right? And brutal, right? Sanatorium's 2nd album is surely ugly, as they turned into a goredeath hounds with this release. There's something that makes me think of really dirty things, y'know?! But brutal? Hmmm... Not enough.

I blame the lack of brutality over poorish production job. The drums sound kind of light, especially lame, powerless snare. They also sound like a drum machine beating at times. But it's not a machine, since there's some annoying dragging in the playing. The drums are easily the wormy thing here. They are also mixed too much on the front. The production could be more airy, because this sounds tight in the wrong way. Lower end (bass, guitars) is somewhat unclear and cymbals are too sharp and middle ground kind of lacks in richness. Guitars seriously lack of bite. Overally, sound is dry. Vocals are very bizarre. Is it that cover's purple mutated fetus grumbling from inside? Bloody sick and also very annoying. I do not want to listen to those werepig voices, they are ballsless and not really very funny for a long time. Second vocals are usual low growling.

The music is partly extremely simple, partly there's weirder time signatures. A lot of stuff is kind of groovy riffing with unusual drumming in metal music. Some riffs are truly ugly and sound off-putting due to their "happy" nature (more on the first half of the album, second one's more serious sounding, maybe with more North-American death metal influences). Some stuff is catchy as syphilis in its worst. Sanatorium have their own style and I can't compare them with any band and that's big plus. Lyrics are sick, but also quite funny and naive, since the band comes from Slovakia. Sex, death and zombies... Well, the lyrics are printed, which is good as those werepig (that fetus thing) vocals at least are totally incomprehensible.

An interesting acquaintance for those looking for some ugly and "twisted for real" death metal. Now this splits my brain in two, because this isn't bad songwise but production is trite (somebody remix this fucker!!!). All you goredeath-maniaxxx just should try 'Internal Womb Cannibalism', you might fall in a perverse love with it. I didn't.

Rating: 6- (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
04/24/2003 13:50