Amidst the myriad of old school death metal bands hailing the Swedish scene, Abrasive’s fourth full-length The Birth... Born in Sodom is refreshing to hear, even though it’s ultimately and strictly old school. But instead of the chainsaw guitars and graveyard stenches, here we’ve got an extremely muddy, confusing and dirty piece of death metal in the vein of Effigy of the Forgotten by Suffocation.
Deep grunts, downtuned guitar menace with occasional violent screeches, primitive drum sound (just listen to that snare!), not-that-careful execution of instruments, hysterical atmosphere... The list of successful features seems to see no end. Of course, The Birth... Born in Sodom isn’t really anything out of the ordinary, pretty much the opposite, but when a good sound production (some could disagree about that, considering it’s quite lo-fi) gets mixed with compositions that have just enough catchiness, yours truly is impressed in spite of all unoriginality.
The ’sexual perversions’ theme surrounding the album and the band in general might not be my cup of tea, but it’s not like you could decipher the lyrics anyway and, most importantly, the band doesn’t sound like a vapid porngrind group. They know what they’re doing here, assaulting with grand blasphemy from the beginning to the very end. The Birth... Born in Sodom is not to disappoint those who enjoy the band mentioned in the first paragraph, as long as you’re not expecting anything innovative.
Deep grunts, downtuned guitar menace with occasional violent screeches, primitive drum sound (just listen to that snare!), not-that-careful execution of instruments, hysterical atmosphere... The list of successful features seems to see no end. Of course, The Birth... Born in Sodom isn’t really anything out of the ordinary, pretty much the opposite, but when a good sound production (some could disagree about that, considering it’s quite lo-fi) gets mixed with compositions that have just enough catchiness, yours truly is impressed in spite of all unoriginality.
The ’sexual perversions’ theme surrounding the album and the band in general might not be my cup of tea, but it’s not like you could decipher the lyrics anyway and, most importantly, the band doesn’t sound like a vapid porngrind group. They know what they’re doing here, assaulting with grand blasphemy from the beginning to the very end. The Birth... Born in Sodom is not to disappoint those who enjoy the band mentioned in the first paragraph, as long as you’re not expecting anything innovative.
3.5 / 5
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