Delaware horror-obsessed old school death metal upsurge Scorched banged their way out of the cemetery gates with a broken pelvis on their self-titled 2015 demo originally released on Dark Descent Records adjacent Unspeakable Axe imprint. It rated high on my mentions for 2015 and won me over with it’s punchy old school death metal sound with a solid understanding of thrash metal’s influence upon death metal’s early womb-kickery. That first demo alone is enough reason to grab ‘Excavated for Evisceration’, a compilation that includes the self-titled demo, and their 2017 EP ‘Hymns From the Cellar’ which featured a more brutal and bloody approach, tossing aside some of the mid-paced riffing in favor of face-slapping filth-blasts.

Scorched’s early sound built upon the rotten pulse of Autopsy inspired Finnish death metal and beheaded it with Florida and New York old school death influences. Though that might sound contrived by description they simply made old school death metal that was cross-referential and not limited to one style. The drummer’s style can range from thrashing d-beat all the way to brutal death metal on a dime but his best fills kick out on mid-paced Morbid Angel-esque moments. The self-titled demo reminded me of Baphomet‘s ‘Inheritors of the Dead’ and their 2016 full-length ‘Echoes of Dismemberment’ made the same sort thrash-reduced of leap that Banished did on ‘Deliver Me Unto Pain’. Obviously not a fully direct comparison though, as I hear shades of Convulse and mid-west death metal in Scorched‘s sound as well.

With a new full-length on 20 Buck Spin on the horizon in later 2018 ‘Excavated for Evisceration’ is a great introduction to Scorched past and present, though I would recommend their first full-length in tandem before the new one hits. If nothing else you need to check this out for their 2015 self-titled demo, it is anything but reverent in it’s treatment of rotten, blasting old school death metal that shows great range from mid-paced throat-punching death/thrash to car-flipping death metal blasts. Check it out of you already like Gatecreeper, Necrot, Autopsy and Cardiac Arrest.

Onslaught of a deadly foe. 4.0/5.0

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