What better diabolical hellscape to pull extreme metal influence from than the looming darkness and chilly depths of er… Cape Cod area Massachusetts. More likely to serve up society’s ills and generally depraved imagery Eaten play an oily, aggressive form of deathgrind-leaning grindcore that occasionally verges on Unholy Grave levels of violence outside of their spastic death riffing. There are only a few points of interest beyond of the music itself for this relatively straight-forward grind band. Members also formed (now defunct) occult stoner/doom metal band Set who released ‘Valley of the Stones’, a notable release back in 2013. Also the band recently terminated their bassist due to alleged sexual assault. So, there’s your useless metal trivia for the week.

Though I love powerviolence and hardcore/grind variations I’m not a pure grindcore or deathgrind fanatic. My leanings are towards late 80’s and early 90’s deathgrind and some Napalm Death influenced groups. Benümb‘s ‘Soul of the Martyr’ is basically a golden standard/high watermark for my taste in grind and in some ways Eaten‘s self-titled record hits the right notes for me; You’ve got relentless hardcore influenced blasts, death metal influenced grind riffing, and big doom metal moments cropping up on occasion. Where I lose the plot for this sort of release is in the repeated listens. Guitar and drum work must stand out within hardcore or death metal influenced genre entries and in this case Eaten‘s debut consists of merely par performances.

At 19 tracks across 17 minutes you’re surely getting high speed grindcore in the briefest possible intervals without losing coherence. The lean towards ringing, chugged death metal riffs ends up blurring away the bigger hardcore moments and almost frantically resemble transitional Pyrrhon riffs if they’d been wiped of their tech-death prowess. The lack of breakout or focus-shifting hardcore riffs ends up leaving  me with the feeling that the guitar compositions are all from the cutting room floor of an average death metal album they haven’t made yet. There are a couple bangers here though, “Unpleasant Disturbance” being the most effective song overall and “Universal Plague” acts as a nice doom influenced endpoint for the record. I had a higher appreciation for the record before I sat down and wrote about it. In passing it was closer to a 3.5 but with more and more listening the value of ‘Eaten’ dropped considerably. Definitely listen to that Set full-length, though.

Marrow and blood. 2.75/5.0

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