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Deeds Of Flesh

Trading Pieces

(c)(p)1996 Repulse Records

Review by Neil St.Laurent

CD Provided by Repulse Records

Deeds Of Flesh starts with what was meant to be a really disgusting intro: the sounds of a person carving up and eating another person. Without any visual though this comes dangerously close to just being pathetic.

The band is what death metal was at one time. They give the form of this art in it's original form, unaltered for your death metal dreams. The music is heavy, often the bass is louder than the guitar. The guitar riffs are intense, fast and slow, simple and varied. They aren't trying to achieve any harmony, and they aren't going to attain that atmospheric sound; they are raw and deep, it's how death started and that's how Deeds Of Flesh is keeping it. You also won't find any of the higher pitched soloing around here. The guitar keeps to it's task, providing some sort of flow to the discordant nature of death metal. The bass also helps maintain some level of coherence in the music, not to say that it doesn't at times resemble grindcore. A bit of confusion on this album comes from the drumming, often going off into blast beats not to be accompanied by the guitar. Indeed at times the drums seem quite independant of what else is happening. Though you have to admire any death band that manages to work into the music, drumming that approaches those insane speeds.

Finishing up the touches on the album are the lyrics and vocals that are partially to blame for the art getting a societely frowned upon name, "Death Metal". Erik (on main vocals I believe) manages not to spew up his entrails while doing the guttoral growl that many of us have come to love. While Erik won't loose too much blood on stage growling it's a different story for the always innocent victims of the lyrics. We have carnivores devouring humans, rending flesh, random eviscerations, and as a bonus "Trading Pieces" has a mortician who believes the human body is like a set of lego. For the most part you can assume that the mutilitation and brutality always begins while the victims are still alive, death metal couldn't have it any other way.

Deeds Of Flesh sticks to the roots of death and is clearly old school death metal. It's not exactly background music you can sit and listen to while say, laying out a magazine issue, but it serves its purpose to get the adrenaline pumping and inspire mosh pith violence. While I often find that Deeds Of Flesh is missing strength in their music (that is it doesn't hold together very well all the time) they have merit in their music and any death metal (of the older variety) fan would surely enjoy it.