Regurgitated Entrails - Demo 2022 (Self-released)
This snack needed frying up for three reasons. First: the Kid Pix artwork completes a neat primary-color triptych with my last two reviews. (Yay!) Second, and with regard to the former post on Swarm & Decay: this less creatively titled Demo 2022 gives me license to hype another growth on the fecund pile of 'old school' death metal up-and-comers, sprouting in fuller and even gorier bloom. Third and finally: Regurgitated Entrails are every bit the explosion of blood-and-guts brutality that their band name suggests—a massacre as calculated as it is grossly irreverent. Labels should shoot these San Diegans an email pronto, because the mid-December ‘I couldn’t care less’ release date isn’t going to keep them hidden long. They unload vintage slam tropes with whiz-kid celerity, so each moment brings a new ‘ooph’ face. There is more than one demon-fart bass drop per song, and all of them will shutter your speakers in amped-up/clipped-down glory. The vocal performance sounds like a Wookiee trying to speak toilet bowl, and perfectly surfs the crest of a few righteous grooves (see the final third on "Septic Amputation," especially). And still, as is customary in brutal death metal, the percussion wins the day. Drummer Nathan Gonzalez can go from janky malfunctioning cash register to bedpan table tennis. Like the rest of Demo 2022, his art is more than just a barrage of pong snare—but has got plenty of that, too.