Terrorize Brutalize Sodomize

Album Review

When a band calls itself Vomitory and one of its albums is titled Terrorize Brutalize Sodomize, it isn't hard to guess what type of music is involved: death metal — and definitely not the more nuanced type of death metal. There are, in fact, some bands that have broadened death metal's horizons by favoring a nuanced, musical, and intricate approach; anyone who still thinks that the term "melodic death metal" is an oxymoron hasn't seriously listened to At the Gates, In Flames, Age of Ruin, Callenish Circle, or Wehrwolfe. But Vomitory have never been about intricacy or nuance; the Swedish outfit has firmly believed in bombast for the sake of bombast and carries on in that vein on this late-2006 recording. Vomitory do not avoid death metal's limitations — they celebrate them — and they don't run away from the grindcore stereotype of death metal on Terrorize Brutalize Sodomize; they proudly embrace it, both lyrically and musically. That means insanely fast tempos; it means growling "cookie monster" vocals and song titles like "Scavenging the Slaughtered," "Eternal Trail of Corpses," "Cremation Ceremony," and "Whispers from the Dead." Despite having such titles, Terrorize Brutalize Sodomize is never genuinely unsettling the way that Slayer (or, on the black metal side, Gorgoroth) can be genuinely unsettling. Like the grindcore that Cannibal Corpse and Carcass provided in their heyday, this CD comes across as more comic and dark-humored than anything. Slayer never sound the least bit ironic, whereas Vomitory sound very ironic. Terrorize Brutalize Sodomize won't win over those who complain about death metal's limitations, but die-hard fans of this approach will find it to be an inspired and well-played, if predictable, example of death metal at its most stereotypically cartoonish.