Ferox
Insides Out At The Mortuary Gates  

Self Released 2007

The UK's minions of death metal, Ferox, deliver a putrid pile of old school inspired brutality on their debut album.  Starting with Ten Thousand Bodies, Ferox advance their most vicious and straightforward track of the album after a grinding churn and intense eruptions of machine-gun drum lines that ratchet up the tension and terror.  It has a hammering beat and violent riffs that bring to mind early 90s US death metal.  Rancid Abortion Chorus is like a tank as it pulverizes you underneath gritty guitars and relentless drums.  Hints of Deicide's debut bubble up during the track's innards.  Then we turn towards a shadowy melodic phrasing of riffs that add depth and surrealism to the track.  Circular riffs alternate on Morning Quarter.  The riffs saw through your ears like a bonesaw through flesh.  Milk Of Human Sickness sounds like a cross between Deceased and Death's Evil Dead as a melodic opening is brutalized by a frenzied riff and tapping drum lines.  The melodic section keeps resurfacing and increasingly puts comparisons to Fearless Undead Machines era Deceased in my mind.  This track stands as my favorite on the album.  Pus N Cum utilizes a flowing main riff that shifts into a meaty midtempo passage and horror-inducing, near-melodic segment.  Blasting, full speed and with a bestial intent, you are immediately assaulted by the intense drums of Cannibal Ferox.  The track downshifts into raspy mutilations of guitar and ghoulish vocals.  The album closes with the title-track which is doomy, gloomy and full of sinister moods.  A mournful riff and plodding beat gets the song underway.  Then we have our face ripped off my sharp breaks and explosions of speed and drumming hatred.  Bloody bits of early Cannibal Corpse-esque gore splatter the later stages of the song.  Ferox sews the cadaverous flesh of old school death metal with to chunks of melodic flourishes and ultra-brutal speed and comes up with one of the most gripping and barbaric slabs of music I have heard in a while.  Listen to this and try not to go on a murderous rampage, I dare you!