This fledgling Russian death metal band describe themselves “Pure HM-2 sound Old School Death Metal” and that is more or less all you really need to know before jumping into their debut full-length. I find that folks either live by the ultra-overdriven multi-tracked Swedish signature sound, or they’re bored with it. I’m pretty much in the middle where find the buzzsaw sound, pioneered by Uffe Cederlund/Tomas Skogsberg, powerful within music of varied pace and mind-numblingly useless otherwise. Wombripper’s riffing is such that it feels less tuned to their guitar sound than they suggest, and it could work just as well without it. In fact, they might be better off without it.

‘From the Depths of Flesh’ is immediately familiar territory that bands like Fleshcrawl and Horrid have explored in depth but they keep it interesting with a few melodic benders and some death/doom lunges. The crunchy Incantation-esque pinch harmonics in the refrain of “Immolation Rites” is the first brief glimpse of personality on the record and “Frantic Exhumation” pulls a big monster riff almost directly from Entrails‘ playbook. “Locked in the Iced Coffin” is probably the best track here as it channels equal parts Nirvana 2002 and ‘The God that Never Was’ era Dismember.

Even if Wombripper aren’t out to hit the reset button on this burly guitar driven death metal style they do a good job of it. It seems like a genre in and of itself that won’t go away anytime soon. Their debut is exceptional only for it’s more adventurous moments and a really solid drummer who shouldn’t be limited to the d-beaten slog of ‘Entombed metal’. I would highly recommend this if you’ve exhausted your old Entrails and Vomitory records and just need more, otherwise it is more or less rote.

Uncompromising force. 3.0/5.0

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