You just gotta love that name! I mean Exquisite Pus. It sounds so good and reminds you about your painful acne face, which you always wanted to touch to see some white/yellowish, smelly pus squirt on a mirror. For my surprise, the band does not play goregrind. Well, not all the time. The bands trade is death metal, where old school clashes with more contemporary styles.

Mishmash was the first adjective to come to my mind when listening to the album. After too lengthy war sounds/piano intro, a listener is thrown into the middle of Exquisite Pus who sound like they are throwing part after part at random manner. The first proper song is a perfect example of this: First there's a lame slam part which turns into a marvellous lead guitar part, after which comes a 80's style insane guitar solo, followed by a fast verse which slows into mid-paced boring crap, and then it's basically back to the start and throwing same parts in a bit different order or something.

Exquisite Pus do not offer anything new, but some of their recycled stuff is so good you don't care it's nothing new, but some parts are just so generic you want to tear your hair off. At least there's no any bands coming to my mind who this reminds me of. I mean generally, because that part sounds like Cannibal Corpse and that's more like Suffocation, but hey, that's clearly Hate Eternal, and that's like Thanatos. And so on... Exquisite Pus can be said to sound pretty North American with their material, with hints of European death metal and grindcore here and there. There are many vocal styles heard; from low growling to throat rattle and everything between. Some good, some not so good. One thing I want to tell to labels about promos: They want us to analyse an album thoroughly, even though it is impossible because usually there's no lyrics and cover sheet is badly lacking. I'm telling this because I believe that by following lyrics with 'Dead [Forgotten]', the songs might have made way more sense!

The production is organic, except for the clicking bass drums. The guitars and the bass sound marauding, backed by varying fire support from the able drummer. Another thing I want to point out about promos: Why put out mp3 promos with inferior than CD quality? Fuck, I hear the difference even when comparing "CD quality" mp3's and actual CD... The last song isn't actually 15 minutes long, because there's over 6 minutes of silence during the song! I thought that this stupid-as-a-really-stupid-thing trick was already forgotten, but sadly not...

No red threads in the songs, so 'Dead [Forgotten]' is a total mishmash of brutal death metal styles. This is how I hear it without the lyrics anyways. Sometimes it shines, but usually it is way too generic. So, the band has some introspection to do.

Rating: 5 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
02/04/2010 11:46