Customer Reviews

Slaughter & Apparatus: A Methodical Overture

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I like the changes Aborted have taken. I do appreciate their more melodic approach. Sure, they are a little less grinding than in the past. But their riffs keep getting more and more memorable. They sound more directional with each release. And this one follows their natural progression. They haven't become softer. they have become more dynamic. The vocals still rage from intense growls to sweet highs. The product is better than before as Tue Madsen is improving his sound by taming his overly-digital sound to have a bit more of a warm edge, without sounding lo-fi by any means. And you can't bypass the killer guest spots of drumming from the Psycroptic guy, and Jeff Walker vocals.

I always thought of Aborted to be one of the most interesting death metal bands to ever come up. They don't carbon copy other bands, and their vocalist Sven has an amazing vocal range. On "Slaughter and Apparatus", Aborted continues with the melodic/brutal mix style that they did well with on "The Archaic Abbatoir" and they still do a magnificent job at it. With some crushing riffs in their music, how could you resist? Don't forget the guest vocals by Carcass's own Jeff Walker on "Odious Emanation". Recommended if you enjoyed Goremageddon and The Archaic Abbatoir.

What an album!!!! Aborted really changes through time, injecting more melody in each song with catchy guitar riffs. Like the "Archaic's Abbatoir" the drums are fast that you can't believe, the bass lines makes a great contribution.!!! Death metal album of the year!!!

This is the best album they've put out since "Engineering". It has more of a groove then Goremageddon but still very technical and fast. Has guest vocals from Jeff Walker and a couple of others. I seriously can't stop listening to it.

Much like a Planned Parenthood employee, I like everything aborted. Slaughter and Apparatus: A Methodical Overture is a heaping pile of puke- and puss-covered viscera. Since Aborted is a gore-grind/death metal band, I have to assume that's what they were going for. Not only is the CD as brutal as a rabid ape cannibalizing himself while sexually assaulting his mother, it's also pretty damn catchy. A number of the songs--"The Chondrin Enigma" and "Avenious," for example--contain segments with a heavy groove that gets stuck in your brain like some kind of rare tumor or exotic worm. Jeff Walker's guest vocals on the songs "An Odious Emanation" and "A Methodical Overture" are an excellent addition, and Aborted's cover of "Surprise! You're Dead!" by Faith No More is very well done.

The CD is around forty-five minutes long, which is a good length, but as with any great CD, it always seems to be over too soon. I mean, I've already heard the album twice by the time I finish dissecting the neighbor's rottweiler.

Grind is a style of metal that is not for everyone. The genre usually consists of awkward time signatures, chaotic rhythms and tempos, and unstructured riffs and beats. The vocals usually range from extremely low grunts that cannot be comprehended, to pig squeals and high shrieks. The speed is consistent through a Grind album, keeping the tempo moving at an extremely fast pace. However, Aborted has never fully fit into any of these stereotypes.

With Sven "Svencho" de Caluwé leading the band at vocals, Aborted has established themselves as one of the pioneers of the Death/Grind genre. Mixing the elements of Death Metal with Grindcore while throwing in harmony and chord progression found in Melodic Death Metal. This has always been a distinct factor in separating Aborted from other bands within the Grindcore genre. The band's ability to blend three genres into a unique sound has contributed to the overall popularity and unique style that the group has established throughout the years.

Throughout their discography, the band has always blended the three styles, but tended to lean more towards the Death Metal share of their musical style. However, with each passing album, Aborted has begun to lean the other way, incorporating more melodic sounding elements into their songs. "Slaughter & Apparatus" is an album that shows Aborted fully embracing their new style with stupendous results. Songs like "The Spaying Seance" use guitar solos and higher vocalization styles more commonly found with Melodic Death Metal than with Death Metal or Grindcore. Aborted has managed to find a balance between three different genres: Melodic Death Metal, Death Metal, and Grindcore.

There are elements of all three genres present throughout the album. With some tracks being fast and heavy, utilizing the traditional Grind sound fans of the genre come to expect from a Grind band, and others sounding more like a Death Metal song. For the most part, Aborted bounces back and forth enough between the three styles on the same track that it is sure to please fans of all three genres. Sven uses a mixture of low grunts, growls, and high shrieks, while the instrument work ranges from fast and heavy, to melodic and progressive with excellently executed solos thrown in throughout the album.

There's only one way to define the sound that Aborted has established on the album "Slaughter & Apparatus" and that is Melodic Death/Grind. With Sven's new side project "System Divide" being a Melodic Death Metal band, the future of Aborted looks like more Melodic Death/Grind albums are in store, a change that will continue to separate the group from their peers.

Before you get on me why I only gave this 3 1/2 Stars, let me just say that I am not the biggest fan of Aborted. I love Death Metal, but I consider Aborted to be more of a mixture of Hardcore Metal/GrindMetal (which I dont really care for), Alot of people and fans label them as Technical, but I just dont put them in the same class as Nile, Odious Mortem, Cryptopsy, I would say they are more Technical Grind then Death, but anyway, if that is your bag, and you are a diehard of GoreGrind, then I think you will love Aborted. I didnt care for the first two albums, but they had their moments. "Slaugher adn Apparatus" is the best release to date (not including the new one I havent heard yet) and it has some moments that really shine, that will make fans off all types of DeathMetal slammin their heads to. Impressive Drumming and some great guitar work make me like seven of the tracks on this album, but still some of the vocal work still gets under my skin. I just dont like the growl with the high pitch almost whine. Dont get me wrong, its not anywhere near the crap of EMO SCREAMO, but I just dont care for the vocals, and that is what has been a turn off for me for this band. Another thing the band seems to be guilty of, is not changing the sound enough for some songs, I mean some songs sound exactly the same (they were really guilty of that on the atrious "The Archaic Abattoir" Still, there is some good stuff here, and I just didnt like this album enough to say its only a bit above average, but then again this is coming from someone who is only a causal Aborted fan. I still think its worth a spin or two for all fans of extreme music to listen to. "Spraying Seance" and "Carnage Basked it its Eubblience" are worth the price of admission alone. Also noteworthy are "Methoodical Overture", "Foul Nucleus of Resurrection" "Archetype" and "Ingenocity in Genocide" Once again, its not as guilty as being as repetieve as the other albums, but its still has some weak points that I just cant get past.

It seems like people have been crowning bands as "the next Carcass" almost since the day "Heartwork" was released in 1993. But even though countless groups (including The Black Dahlia Murder, Hate Eternal, Impaled, All Shall Perish, and County Medical Examiners) would make Carcass proud, it is now officially safe to say that the heir to the throne has finally been found. That band's name is Aborted.

Very much like that other band mentioned above, this Belgium five-piece have gotten progressively more melodic and experimental with each release, and as a result, they've also polarized their fanbase, and made many longtime followers outraged. Their third full-length, 2003's "Goremageddon," was their first to flirt with melody (with the use of occasional melodic solos); and 2005's "The Archaic Abattoir" took experimentation a step further by adopting a crystal clear production, some "Heartwork"-style groove, and even a couple open-chord progressions. And now, two years later, Aborted have released their far and away most harmonic, innovative, and controversial release to date, this year's very aptly Carcass-esque entitled "Slaughter & Apparatus: A Methodical Overture."

Of course, this is still Aborted, so it is still predominantly very brutal. Thus, while there is a wealth of actual, honest-to-god melody, variety, harmony, and texture to be heard here, you initially probably won't even notice them because they are very subtle when constantly surrounded by stellar, airtight musicianship (i.e. furious thrash riffs and punishing blast beats). And there are a handful of traditional-sounding Aborted songs on hand here. The excellent, catchy, blistering riffs in such monsters as "Archetype" and "Odious Emanation" showcase the band's old-school-esque sound, and so do the title track, "And Carnage Basked In Its Ebullience," and "Prolific Murder Contrivance," which are bursting with slamming, lightning-fast, mind-bogglingly amazing blasts (newfound drummer extraordinaire Dan Wilding is a true surgeon behind the trapkit!)

A good chunk of the album, however, is a different story. All twelve of these songs pack a great, throat-ripping intensity, but a lot of them also manage to retain a surprisingly high level of tunefulness and sonic richness because deliciously melodic riffs and leads abound throughout. Plus, some wailing, almost crystalline solos that sounds taken straight out of the Gothenburg playbook even crop up here and there (see "The Foul Nucleus of Resurrection" and "Ingenuity In Genocide"). And Aborted don't just stop there -- they take even more daring ventures on synthesizer (yes, synthesizer!)-enhanced offerings like "Avenious" and "And Carnage Basked In Its Ebullience" (the former is of particular note for its almost symphonic keyboards). Lastly of note, "Underneath the Rorulent Soil" is possibly the disc's biggest highpoint, and boasts one of the coolest and most chillingly atmospheric intros/outros in recent memory.

Naturally, many a grindcore purist will react to "Slaughter & Apparatus" the same way they did to "Heartwork" -- by being disgusted by it and labeling it a "sell-out." No, this is probably not the type of run-of-the-mill extreme metal that you're used to hearing, but the fact of the matter is, experimenting and evolving should never be frowned upon when the result is one of the most original, unique, exciting, well-textured, unpredictable, and meticulous grindcore/technical death metal/melodeath releases of all time. Also, be sure to give this album more than one listen because it will surely take some time to reveal its full genius. In fact, it may be a few years before most metalheads realize how important it is to the genre but time will prove its worth. Granted, "S&A: AMO" falls just short of complete perfection (on account of a slick, over polished sound and some song-to-repetition), but it is still another excellent effort from these latter-day death-grind masters.