Monday, October 20, 2008

Aborted - The Purity of Perversion

Aborted
The Purity of Perversion
Soulreaper





As someone who grew up on a steady diet of Carcass and Cannibal Corpse, gore-soaked death metal is nothing new. It’s certainly nothing shocking, except that The Purity of Perversion treads dangerously close to the line labeled “unacceptable.”

The album’s motif, much less just the imagery, is inspired by grizzly Central American urban gun battles. As is clearly labeled on the CD case, this is NOT for the weak. It makes Matando Gueros look like a Christmas card. Aborted is the first band since Brujeria that made me do a double-take. If nothing else, Aborted should be commended for creating something exceptional during the (almost inexplicable) late 90s gore-grind glut.

Oh, what about the music, you say?

Exceptionally well-played death/grind is what’s going on here. Crushing Morbid Angel-style sludge, lightning-quick blast beats and even some melodic passages (think At The Gates, not In Flames) can be found on The Purity of Perversion. Then there are those breakdowns.

These are not hardcore breakdowns at all. These are well-written, well-executed and are often in the same key as the rest of the song; something you rarely see in hardcore, unless you count Earth Crisis-style, open E imbecility. No, these breakdowns are more akin to what Obituary and Bolt Thrower were doing in the late 1980s.

Looking back on it now, you’d have to be deaf not to hear what Century Media saw in this band. If you are at all into death metal, you need this.

Here's a video tour report with Aborted from the Summer Slaughter tour.









\m/