«Is Abhorrence in any way accidentally connected with the word horrible?», thought I, taking the debut album of this Brazilian threesome playing whirlwind death metal (if the saying on the promo-CD is to be believed) in my hands. The saying further stated emphatically that this album, bearing the somewhat banal title «Evoking The Abomination», is simply «extreme beyond extremity», fortifying this statement with two exclamation points. Well, you can guess the rest — nobody should miss such a listening experience (especially keeping in mind the two exclamation points). So I headed home to the CD-player while looking at the cover of the CD firmly grasped in my hands and thinking to myself that the deeds of Krisiun are not simply living and flourishing, but also set a good example for the younger generation.

While I’m walking home it makes some sense to check the album cover more closely. Having thrown my first glance at it, I gazed at it more carefully and I couldn’t deter myself from laughing. Imagine the following picture: some strange-looking ruins on which a wizard is standing with his frock lifted up to his ears (wind’s pranks?), his hands raised to the sky, and, apparently, he’s evoking various beastliness in the region of a pentagram drawn near the ruins, the diameter of which is three times bigger than wizard’s height. Some people are staring at all this stuff and the beastliness is actually nibbling some of them. On the bottom of the picture you can see a lovely couple of devils busy doing something incomprehensible with tubby infants. Somebody’s ass sticks out nearby. Maybe it’s shoulders, of course, but I think it’s an ass for some reason. Judging by its size, this ass belongs to an unidentified infant. A strange tree, resembling a bisected dick, grows nearby. On the ends of this apparent dick, two victims of a necktie party are hanging out (emphasis on «hang» *grin*). Poor souls. On the other hand, they won’t be bored together. The main action takes place around the pentragram, of course. There rampages the aforementioned beastliness, looking similar to a monster from a hentai fan nightmare — a horde of the skew-eyed faces grinning with their long… erm… teeth and broadly blowing open their humid kissers. The author of this epic canvas must have been listened to Gortician’s «Vagina Dentata» too much. The rightmost face was apparently caught by the wizard’s spell right during its dinnertime and it obviously doesn’t like such a maladroit invasion of its digestive life — it furiously vomits skulls of various caliber and the fire of lividity burns in its eyes. This wizard will get his ass into some serious trouble someday, I tell ya. He’ll be devoured and crapped out in a matter of seconds without even having a chance to fart. A big bald melon in the center of the cover (third from the right) amorously bends its tongue as if seducing the wizard and listeners. And I had hoped that demons do not breed any homosexual species! It’s just what we needed — to get into hell and endure the molestations of a faggot-demon clan, in addition to the usual ass-on-the-pan-frying sessions. But the main surprise and the show-stealer, located between these two demonoids, is a gargantuan dick arched in the shape of a sigma letter, with big, wet and wailing eyes (!), a huge skull-shaped furuncle, and a malevolent eyesy-nosey-toothy kisser on the tip, belching out a yellowish lightning bolt right into the center of the pentagram. How symbolic. The confounding debacle of the listener is consummated by a horny (I mean «horned», for those of you who’re sexually concerned) dinosaur-sized skeleton, and the resurrected cavalry of Tchapaev, who have comfortably settled themselves somewhere below the bouquet of faces, aiming at the wizard hoping to make a barbecue or at least a cutlet from him. Everything is crowned by the lethally corny «shaggy» band logo. Like it? Me too.

Let’s look at the butt of the album. A logo, inverted cross, track-list, small annotation, and a picture of the trinity (no, not the Holy Trinity! Relax — it’s the band) printed in blood-red tones. Okay, you’re evil, we get it. To tell the truth, it’s not clear to me why two band members are long-haired and wear sunglasses, and third one is lonesomely standing with the haircut and without the glasses? Not enough money or what? Okay, to hell with it, dress as you want, the point is to play good music, right?

Oh yes, the music. We have finally got to it. Musically, Abhorrence is a strict copy of Krisiun. The resemblance between the two is simply stunning, just look: both Krisiun and Abhorrence are three Brazilians (two of whom are brothers) playing rabid, brutal death metal with mid-ranged metalcore vocals, insane blastbeats, volcanic bass drums, sporadic solos, ultraplatitudinous song titles, and cheesy artwork. I think that this can be called «meatgrinding» death metal. The discrepancies between Krisiun and Abhorrence are chiefly cosmetic — for example, Krisiun has a «brighter» sound, which is less hollow and more meaty. Krisiun songs, on the average, are longer and a bit more complex. It makes sense to describe more specifically all the elements of this «meatgrinding» death metal, given that we have an example close at hand.

From the point of timbre, the vocals are located at about mid-range. From what I can tell, they feel really comfortable there, because no aberrations to the «higher» or «lower» areas are present. The means of vocal emission is the throat (no pectoral sounds), that’s why it’s not quite growling, but it’s not screaming either. Rather, the vocals are clean, but with a harsh rattle, like those of Max Cavalera (Sepultura/Soufly). The vocal parts are often intercrossing, but the obligatory question «and how are you going to play that live, smartasses?» doesn’t rise, because if the vocalist doesn’t stretch out the last syllables of the intercrossing parts, he should bellow them just in time. It’s hard to say something about the bass guitar, mainly because it virtually can’t be heard (frankly speaking, I’m not sure if it’s present at all). The lion’s share of the CD is occupied by death metal blastbeats — crisp, sharp, powerful and punchy like a steamhammer. Their peculiarity in the music of Abhorrence (and Krisiun) is that in the beginning of most themes, the three snare drum hits that follow the first one are omitted, i.e., after making the first hit, the drummer virtually spins his sticks in the air during the next three hits and continues hitting the snare only after that. From the first second of the album the drummer switches into «double bass mode» and turns it off only on the last second of the last song, which means that if you listen to «Evoking The Abomination» at a good (i.e., maximum) volume, you’ll feel as if you were sitting on the enamel-plated pan which covers the top of an erupting volcano. For those of you who’re less imaginative, it can be described this way: visualize yourself in a situation where a concrete slab is tied to your ass, and somebody is pecking it with the jackhammer. Overall the drum-playing speed is simply vertiginous — there are maybe around 30 seconds of stuff that is slower than the average Slayer «Epidemic» tempo on the whole album. Everything else is blastbeats and fast parts, a-la Sepultura «Beneath The Remains». Add quite a good drum sound (it’s possible to hear both the bass drums and the snare at any given time, although the closed hi-hat which is probably used during the blastbeats, is hard to hear) to the mix and you will get a cocktail much deadlier than one of the «Molotov» variety. The guitars, being a bit poor in the area of timbre, sound a bit weak. They lack thickness; or «meat», if you will. On the other hand if they had a sound like on Nile’s «Black Seeds Of Vengeance» or on Dismember’s «Death Metal», this would’ve been total overkill, because the guitar parts are never played slower than the bass drums’ parts. Imagine for a moment how sixteenth notes on a bass drum would sound at 250 bpm and you will slowly understand what the hell is going on here. Also keep in mind the non-stop percussive grinding — one gets the impression of a churning meatgrinder, which made it necessary for me to coin the term «meatgrinding death metal». The solos are mostly sporadic, and bear the mark of early Slayer — i.e., they sound like the graduates of GIT having a head-cutting contest. Of course, this frenzied string plucking doesn’t quite match up with the «catching a cockroach running on the fretboard» riffs that those guys in Anal Cunt use. But it can give quite a headache to fans of Marty Friedman and Chuck Schuldiner solos. The riffs, many of which date back to the mid/late eighties, seem to resemble Sepultura’s debut LP. However, they are hardly memorable, and not particularly complex. Furthermore, they are all are pretty similar: banal tremolo-picking on the sixth string, accompanied by slight upward jumps from time to time. This makes for some rather elementary tunes. It may seem strange, but such riffs in the music of Abhorrence are unostentatious, and they fit well in the overall picture. At the very least, they don’t cause any moral or physical trauma to the listener. The song structures aren’t terribly original, as they seem to revolve around one or two central themes, which alternate with a few others.

All these components can be found on the very first song, simply and symbolically called «Abattoir». After a short, thrashy start (around 0:13) a blastbeat with the ability to disembowel a small hamster begins. The central song theme (from which the song has started) alternates with other riffs, retreating from the listener for a moment in the second part of the song, then reappearing towards the end. The next song, «Evoking The Abomination», starts with a riff which is almost identical to the theme of the previous song; and of course, the blastbeats start immediately after. Total hamster overkill. The song continues, and if there were no blastbeat, I would think that I’m listening to a classic underground thrash band from the times when extreme music had the inimitable atmosphere of an arcane sabbath. Wonderful feelings. The third track, «Sacrificial Offerings», starts with a downright bulldozer riff accompanied by some equally «bulldozing» percussion, and then… here comes our beloved blastbeat! Wow, some parts here have high background vocals, a-la Deicide! The riffs are afraid to run too far from the sixth string, thus the song really sounds like a drill piercing a hole in a sore tooth. «Hellish Annihilation», the fourth song, starts with a slower blastbeat which somewhat amazes, because this song looks like a vulgar ballad compared to the previous ones. The high background vocals are present here as well. Somewhere near the second minute, the musicians start to harmoniously flounder (at least these breaks are making such an impression), but quickly rehabilitate themselves and gracefully finish the song. When the fifth song of the album, «Storming Warfare» started, my amazement turned to resentment — this song is played at the same tempo as previous one! I was almost ready to tear the band apart for such guile, but my attention turned to a couple of stunningly melodic (for Abhorrence) riffs, and I turned my attention to them. Unfortunately, these riffs aren’t played often enough during the song to satisfy the ear, and there are some pretty dental-drilling riffs between them, which is as pleasant to listen to as sitting in a dentist’s chair. As I was typing all of the above, «Abhorrer Existence» started. Yes, the songs are quite short — the whole album fits under approximately 26 minutes. This one displays slow blastbeats (again) and some high background vox as well (actually, these are pretty rare). And here goes a beautiful riff which the guys from Slayer wouldn’t be ashamed to use. Unfortunately it ends quickly, but the listener thinks that given the rules of the game, there will be a continuation (we’re not talking about Suffocation «bait and switch» tactics, after all). However, this handsome riff doesn’t appear again. Anyway, this song is worth listening to only because of the aforementioned riff. The next track, «Reborn In Vengeance», has some terribly familiar typical thrash riffs, but I still can’t recall where I have heard it before. Nonetheless, this track doesn’t stand out in any other way, maybe except for the couple of background yelps near the end. Any hamster will be a tough match for the first blastbeat on the last (and the longest — 4:51) song called «Triumph In Blasphemy», but then it (the blastbeat, not the hamster) sounds more solid than the second one, which sounds as if it’s scurrying to the restroom after taking a load of «supercrapine» or «turbopissine» pills. By the way, the central riff of this song is quite good, I wouldn’t mind listening to it several more times. And here’s the end — guitar solos flow as profusely as dribbling snot, accompanied by the howling of wind… and this is what will be ringing in your head for a long time after the music is over.

Summing it up, I have to say that this band’s debut is doubtlessly successful. It is well-played, «meatgrinding» death metal that compensates for the lack of originality with aggression, energetic playing, and a nostalgic atmosphere which will be reverred by all who remember a time when extreme bands were those dark, yet friendly demigods whose music was a true revelation. This will also appeal to those who like fast and extreme music in general (and Krisiun in particular). The only thing that’s needed in my naughty opinion is the presence of more original and memorable riffs, and a meatier sound. Waiting for the next album.

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