Abscess - Dawn of Inhumanity
Peaceville Records
Death Metal
10 songs (52:07)
Release year: 2010
Official Myspace, Peaceville Records
Reviewed by Charles
There are two types of people in this world; those that like death metal, and pitiful weaklings. Life’s natural losers, if you will. You know, the people that look at you strangely when they find out you like this sort of thing. And harsh as it may sound on this band, both may be thankful Abscess broke up. If you’re a pitiful weakling, it’s one less source of awesome music for you to worry your feeble head about. And if you like death metal, it’s because the way is now paved for Autopsy to reform. Oh, Abscess, who will mourn ye?

Well, I for one will miss this band, and this album is a good demonstration of why. The Dawn of Inhumanity is about as straight-up fun as death metal gets. It is essentially the sound of a band titting about. The whole record feels so rickety, as if at any moment it could all collapse into an oozing heap of feedback and gore. The production is rusty and uneven feeling, and the artwork looks like it hasn’t quite finished being coloured in yet.

Whilst it never loses its punkish, low-budget sensibility, The Dawn of Inhumanity is an unexpectedly varied collection of songs, each based around genuinely distinctive ideas that can be as infectious as Tetrodotoxin. The title track brims with primitive energy; an irredeemably knuckleheaded thump characterised by a brutally repetitive, bluntly bludgeoning riff and belching vocals. The Rotting Land, on the other hand, is a bit more complex. It opens with a widdly barbed-wire lead line that sounds utterly incongruous in such a decayed setting. It collapses into a morass of doomy crashes, before making the final descent into madness by degenerating into a haze of a capella screaming and gurgling. The strangest contribution is surely Dead Haze, a grim mockery of a psychedelic jam session, with its spaced-out soloing and feedback making it seem like Hendrix has been exhumed and is playing guitar with hands (and teeth) several decades decayed.

So, this shambling mess of an album contains real bite. The gloriously catchy chorus of What Have We Done To Ourselves? is so memorably pungent that I can hear my neighbours knocking on my door, no doubt to complain again about the deathly stench that starts emanating from my home each time I play this song. They think it is something in the shed, and they threaten to call the police, but we know better, don’t we, reader? They don’t understand the potency of this kind of music, like well-rotted meat and cheese for the ears.

Killing Songs :
The Dawn of Inhumanity, What Have We Done To Ourselves
Charles quoted 78 / 100
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