Bone Gnawer – Feast on Flesh (Pulverised Records)
Sunday, 17th March 2013
At its core, death metal is at its most dominating when the onus is on simplicity and brutality. There’s no real trick to it – some bands
have it (i.e. Jungle Rot, the subject of our review, Bone Gnawer) and some don’t (i.e. most of Six Feet Under’s catalog). And when a band has it, they should do everything in their power to exploit…it. That being said, Feast on Flesh is visceral, overflowing with catchy-as-fuck riffs and the classic vocals from Massacre’s Kam Lee. A winning formula indeed.
Lee proves to be as imitable of a frontman as ever. His decipherable, scrappy vocals are always put in a position to be most successful – just reference his manic barks during “Cannibal Cookout,” which is borders on insane levels of infectiousness. The man is backed by several unheralded Swedish death metal veterans from Ribspreader and Naglfar, which only add to the credibility and ultimately, success of this album.
Bone Gnawer plays it pretty close to the vest throughout this 10-song offering, preferring to rely heavily on thick, chunky riffs and arrangements that reek of early 90’s Floridian death metal. Hooks abound, though, on “Make you Die Slow” (primarily from Lee, of course) and “The Saw Is Family,” which descends into a killer groove during the verse section.
Feast on Flesh never runs out of steam, a rare find for a traditional album of 10songs. Most records like this sputter out halfway through, but lo and behold – the riffs keep coming, Lee keeps barking, and Bone Gnawer continues to annihilate.
www.myspace.com/bonegnawerband
(This content originally appeared on Blistering.com)
