Album Review: Skewered – Deathmethyltryptamine (Stillborn Records)

Sometimes in metal all you want is some Earth-crushingly brutal death. Riffs that hit you over the head with a shovel, bass & drums that beat you into the ground & vocals that spit gravel over the remains of your corpse.

Well, this album, Deathmethyltryptamine from Skewered, is all of this & some.

The death metal riffs are way more listenable than many that also play in this hyper-aggressive style. Often any semblance of melody & structure is lost in a world of noise but here we actually get time-changes & moments that perk the ears up. Nausea is a great showcase of this early on but with the added bonus of drumming that slips effortlessly into a beat that is almost hypnotic.

As good as the music is, the vocals deserve special attention too. Poured out at a number of different paces, always in time with the music so it sounds less like a battle. It’s brutal stuff that sounds akin to a mouthful of bloodied teeth being spat out!

Skewered’s blend of gory death metal is reflected in the song titles & lyrical content. A song like Organ Doner Kebab might sound silly but it’s blasting beat & squealing guitars ensure you have to take it seriously as a song.

Colombian Necktie throws a few hard punches at the start before going for a knockout blow that never fully connects & the wonderfully titled Red Knob Warts lacks the structure found elsewhere. If it wasn’t for the sudden stop & change-up it would be an entirely forgettable track.

It does begin to wear a little thin near the end though, The Lovesong (unsurprisingly) not being much of a ballad (at least in the conventional sense) & Fucked With a Stump rounding off the 12 tracks exactly as they begun…metal that is gonna tear your face off.

It’s not world beating stuff but it’s not supposed to be. What it is though is some damn heavy & damn good death metal.

Full Track Listing:

1. Curbstomp Marathon
2. Nausea
3. Ground and Pound
4. Viscous Mucus
5. Organ Donor Kebab
6. Pawns of War
7. Animalism
8. Colombian Necktie
9. Red Knob Warts
10. The Lovesong
11. Trimethylaminuria
12. Fucked With a Stump

We here at GBHBL would like to thank Skewered & FullBlast! PR for providing us with a copy of the album for review. You can buy the album here, check out their Facebook page, their Bandcamp page & follow them on Twitter.