How various musicians understand the extreme and brutal nature of death metal is all in the eye of the beholder. Having heard 2005 Maleficus by underground Fayetteville, Arkansas outfit Vore, I needed to hear their take on the genre again, even if it comes in the form of the not so new re-issued 1997 EP Dead Kings Eyes and their first full-length Lord of Storms (2001). Maleficus floored me enough with its measured heaviness and I catch myself playing The Line That Divides from that album often.

Lord of Storms clearly shows where the roots of Maleficus came from. It turns out that Vore was never a flash in a pan, and their approach was constant throughout. Not ultra-technical, very much mid-tempo, without a single blastbeat, the death mechanism that is Vore worships His Majesty Riff and savors the utter destruction in the process. If Kataklysm once sampled the phrase that “the revenge is the dish best served cold”, Vore prefers to dole out their heftiness deliberately, decimating the senses bit by bit, by adhering to their rhythmic meaty predatory chops. Track after track this very much Bolt Thrower warmachine rolls along, culminating in head bobbing mesmerizing groove (Veils of Oblivion, Godslayer). This is the perfect music to drive down the street with your car windows open to scare and scurry the non-believers. Periodically doom-soaked, such as in epic horns opener of Primordial Conquest, the “ominous” portion of the Vore dial tends to stay in the max. This gloomy menacing fabric rarely gets punctuated, only for the vocals to take a higher pitch from the steady not-so-bottom-feeding growl, or a solo which nails the culmination in the form of the inevitable final crucifixion (To Be a God).

To show their depth, the band presents the electroacoustic flamenco flavored instrumental Opaque, which, even though a little long at almost 10 min, achieves two goals. For one, Page Townsley and John Voelker could audition for Gypsy Kings with this cut, but knowing the heaviness which came before and will undoubtedly follow after, Opaque is an audio oasis amidst this otherwise gravely brood.

The EP also has an instrumental Albion which very much brings to mind the foggy meadows of the British Isles, but for me its best moments come in the form of slightly shimmering descent into Dante’s Hell on Summon the Nameless, as well as more melodies which Vore was letting in on Suffer the Slave and the title track in its early days. The snare sound still a little thin on the EP, Colin Davis’ (Vile) re-mastering gives Vore sound the massiveness it needed on Lord of Storms.

Independent and sticking to their own guns, more death metal fans owe it to themselves to learn about Vore.