Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Postmortem: Blasting Gore Necropsy - "Regurgitative Enema Glorification" Review



Coroner's Report


Name    Blasting Gore Necropsy                               

Date        July 21, 2021                                             

Place of Birth  Quebec                                             

Classification  Goregrind                                         

Cause of Death   Critical Review                            


Decedent Personal Data:   
    Blasting Gore Necropsy is a Québécois industrial/goregrind band formed in 1999 and much like early Cattle Decapitation, have a lyrical theme dealing in animal rights, anti-vivisection and the standard medical grade gore. As well as a graphically deviant outlook on sexuality. Despite that thin, greasy line between goregrind and pornogrind/pornogore and given the band's affection towards animal rights, I'd say Blasting Gore Necropsy have their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks. That helps when coming across songs like "Lesbian Massacre Pt-2" and "Fecal-based Diet For A Better Living."
    Never the less, 2020's Regurgitative Enema Glorification appears to be the band's first official full length release since 1999's Nazarene Waste, Deformed Body. In between that time they released a demo of sorts with 2006's Regurgitative Enema Glorification (Pre-prod). A lo-fi cassette of blasting noise. Something that might put your anti-16th note tattoo to the test. But a majority of these demo songs cross over to the 2020 version with markedly better production value. Which means that this release has been in the works for around 14 years.

Anatomical Cadaveric Dissection: 
    First thing's first, this is a lengthy release. Thirty-three tracks in just under fifty minutes. That's almost an eternity in the grindcore world. But after multiple listens I was able to dismember Regurgitative Enema Glorification into three acts that made the album's autopsy easier for myself, the reviewer. 
    Before trisecting this putrid, bloated corpse, I wanted to quickly examine the neurocranium to establish the band's general speech patterns and motor skills. With band members with pseudonyms like Baalberith, Defecation and Necrophagia, I'm not going to get too personal or flattering as far as specifics. Vocally, you're going to find your usual suspects including: creaks, growls, gurgles, gargles, snorts, squeals, squelches, belches, brees, blargs and barfs. The tortured highs and the pitched down lows. We have the standard distorted guitar which we will probe into more later. Some drum work that I believe is programmed, but which sounds exceedingly natural and is on point, regardless. There is also a very audible and very properly used bass throughout the album. And finally, I'm unsure but fairly certain that there is some synth work at play in the background. Also something that we will explore more later. 
  • Body Segment A - The first movement of Regurgitative Enema Glorification could be an EP all on it's own. I'd say tracks 1 through 10 are a solid, cohesive work that are probably the most straight up grindcore of the album. The guitar and bass work is thick and chunky. The drum work is full of hyper-blasting, cymbal grabs and stop/starts. It sounds really organic and really fast. This is most encompassed in the song "Sodomy in Gaspesia Pt-1." This is my favorite song of the release. (I never thought I'd being writing that sentence. I've never been to the peninsula. It sounds lovely.) The vocals in this section seem to be more vocalizations than lyrics, especially towards the beginning. Like a choir of gremlins clamoring and regurgitating over one another. They're part lyrical device part instrumentation in their own right. But then there are the anomalies. There are some interesting guitar overdubs. Or are they subtle synth? The band uses this synth to splice in some generic techno-dance beats like those of a video game start-up menu as well as some electric organ. Certainly a 180 degree turn and I'm assuming the reason for the band self-identifying as "industrial gore/grind." At the same time it is also very much inline with the quirkiness of the genre. Blasting Gore Necropsy have a personality and have it on full display, unhinged as it may be. At this point in the album the band's layered background only adds to the denseness of the sound. There's obviously more at work than what could have been just another unmixed and garbled goregrind throwaway cassette tape.  
  • Body Segment B - The second movement is cleaved off somewhere past the thorax and below the abdomen. Floating someplace between tracks 12-24. The dismemberment between gullet and groin is noticeable. There's a slight shift in songwriting here. The vocals evolved from feral coughing to actually forming sounded out lyrics. The guitar sound is less beefy than the previous selection. It's thin and lean and it sounds like a picking change-up towards a more tremolo style. This thinner guitar brings the bass and synth more to the forefront. From shallow synth organ work and strumming changes, to drawn out chords and more simplistic riffing. The songs take on a more black metal via punk rock mood. For instance, "Regurgitative Enema Glorification (Edd Gainn Loves My Sister)" starts out with a drum and bass intro that has a Dead Kennedys meets Sepultura style groove before launching into the band's signature blasting of profanity. And it's this signature of hyper blasting that still remains as a through line, connecting each segment to the whole. Well, that and the random interludes of more electronica. 
  • Body Segment C - Lastly, the lower extremities bring up the sum of the album with the release's longest tracks and an introduction into a death-grind version of the band with doom metal asides and some rock 'n' roll/grind experimentation. For the majority of the final 10 or so tracks, Blasting Gore Necropsy are once again doubling down on the rhythm-synth. As well as, cranking up the Sepultura thrash influence. Odd-ball track "Grind Core vs Black-Metal (The Ultimate Dark Core Combat)" is actually a Korn-esque drum and slap bass funk/metal song that comes out of nowhere. The guitar reverts back to that heavier tone from the beginning and the drumming spaces out the blast beats with a lot more double bass pedal work. We also find the vocals at their most reined in, but still in full goregrind fashion. Although "Symphony of Sodomy (Spiritual Grind Destruction)" has a chorus of clean vocals that I would normally scoff at, but they actually work and the guys have the ability to pull them off. This tail end portion is definitely more metal heavy than gore or grind, but there is still enough blasting to keep most of the songs above water. 
Other Significant Conditions
    Blasting Gore Necropsy's Regurgitative Enema Glorification isn't exactly a wealth of innovation in the genre, but you shouldn't expect it to be. What it does is pull off a more exciting version of it. A large thanks to that being the drumming itself. While so many goregrind bands are content with monotonous two-step skank beats alternated between lazy blast beats, Blasting Gore Necropsy use a higher BPM with enough technicality and cleanliness to make songs really punishing and aggressive, albeit programmed drums. But fuck it, they work. And not just the drums, the musicianship of the band is impressive and pivot between styles fluently. The band also makes an individualistic choice with the industrial/techno music. This can be off-putting depending on the pickiness of the listener and how pure you like your grind. Yet the point is probably, as the song titles and their misspellings imply, to just have fun with it. Or maybe the electronic tunes are just another level of shock value to this band's subgenre-shtick. 
    What I wasn't as impressed with was the simplicity and repetitiveness of the riffs and the metal influence that becomes more prevalent the further you go into this release. If I were a betting man, I would guess that this album might be a post-Nazarene Waste, Deformed Body discography of sorts. Basically a collection of everything recorded in that almost decade and a half between releases. That might account for the difference in tone or in songwriting. Of course I have no idea for sure. But this might be a classic case of recording and releasing some songs that maybe should've stayed in the jam room. Or maybe some songs that were held on to for too long and were reworked over and over again. Never the less, I could be completely wrong and these sections could be some band/fan favorites. Even though I dissected this album for review, Blasting Gore Necropsy does keep their identity throughout. Don't expect any crazy shifts in audio or production. Again, I was really pleased with a lot of the first half of this album and at the length it is, you can't really complain about an extra thirty-something bonus tracks. Enjoy!


FFO: Regurgitate, Last Days Of Humanity, Haemorrhage, Squash Bowels

Listen to the record:


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