The Ultimate Review of To Provoke Genocide

Brutal death metal is a touchy area of the music industry. Often times the releases are either really great or genuinely terrible to the point of rolling your eyes and throwing out the recording. In my experience, there is more terrible releases than decent releases. I feel that most of this comes from the approach into it. Quite a lot of groups simply take the themes, lyrics and sometimes the entire genre too seriously to the point that you can tell the artists were trying really hard to make up sadistically violent lyrics and try to hold substance to the whole thing. Experience has shown me that that is precisely the wrong way to approach it, but instead just think of something that could be taken in sick humor and just go with it. This great piece managed to do just that. Combing sickeningly perverse and sadistic lyrical hilarity with perfect slamming brutality in the instrumentals, get ready to hear an album that will stay in your brutal death metal library for quite some time.

Back on the topic of lyrical elements, perfectly blending sickening humor with the ultimately heavy feel that brutal death metal is known for while maintaining the sense of fun behind it, truly keeps you listening and waiting for the next track. Waiting for what kickass word usage these guys have in store for you next. The vocals aren't truly special in any regard however. It is the usual extreme gutturals with pig squealing thrown in to balance things out. However I couldn't help but noticing something special about the way they went about it. Trying a few unique variations and keeping a damn great rhythm that matched almost perfectly with the instrumentals.

When I listened to the album a second time through I focused mainly on the instrumental and production part of things. The perfect pacing between blast beats and the morbidly slow breakdowns was paced perfectly in a way that you're not lulled to sleep by how slow things are and at the same time not overwhelmed by too much drums and bass that drowns out the sound. The first thing I noticed when listening was the killer slam death metal introduction to the second track. This instantly got me in the mood to keep listening and observing each change in the sound as they went along. The song proceeds with slamming until at about a minute and a half through there is a breakdown. slow and heavy the way it should be, yet not too long or overly drawn out. As I continued to listen, I was hit by a few killer blast beats that tear through you with intensity. Especially on one particular track where the blast beat can only be compared to a fucking machine gun ready to tear your face off. The percussion part of this work really is something to cherish in all of its brutal glory. However, on the flip side the guitars were fairly boring. They were different than any other drop b tuned death metal song out there, which means they have a very dry and uninteresting sound to them, and seem to only fit in strictly as background and nothing to be noticed by unless you really want to pay attention to it. But back on another more positive note, the guitars weren't in your face and just begging to be heard. Instead they are leveled out with everything else so that you can pick and choose what sound you're in the mood for. Say you wanted to simply follow along with the lyrics and listen to the vocals. You'll never have to listen with your ear next to the speaker trying to make out what's going on. Instead you can just simply listen. Adding on to that, the quality of the entire thing was nearly perfect. Yeah sure, there were a few volume adjustment errors on different tracks here and there, but it was not anything big enough to detract from the experience. There was no scratching and there was no muffled sound though, making the quality a noticeable positive factor.

I highly recommend this album to any and all fans of brutal death metal and even to those who are new the scene and are trying to kick the experience off with something good. Recommended purchase amount: $9.00. Don't spend much more than this as the album is somewhat short (approx. 25 min.), but for sure purchase it at anything below or at that price.

Album highlights: "Mortuary Fetishism" and "Wardrobe Excavation".
Final Score: 87 / 100