Taipei Metal

Review: Rampancy - Behind The Mask…The Massacre

Rampancy is a one-man goregrind project helmed by multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Spike, who also plays drums in thrash crossover outfit Bazooka, and plays bass and performs vocal duties in the crust punk band Total Disruption. Behind The Mask…The Massacre, released in 2006, was Rampancy’s first, and thus far only, full-length album, after releasing a demo entitled I Don’t Want to Eat and a three-way split with Bowel Stew and Granulocytic Blastoma in 2005. The sound is pure gore in the vein of bands such as Rompeprop, Dead Infection and porngrinders Cock and Ball Torture. Simplistic guitar riffs are played over programmed bass lines and drum beats that go back and forth between blast beat insanity and mid-tempo groove.

The songs have no lyrics, as Spike chooses instead to switch between high-pitched screams and low, guttural vocal sounds, so although Rampancy falls into the goregrind category but virtue of the band’s sound, the same can’t be said of the songs subject matter for the simple fact that, well, there is no subject matter. The best one can do to glean any sort of message from the songs, or guess what Spike might be screaming about, is to take a glance at the titles of the 28 songs on the album. With such diverse and at times political statements in the titles, such as “Fuck Racism,” “Cigurates (sic) Will Kill You All,” and “Social Sickness” alongside more gore-minded titles such as “Girlfriend Dismemberment,” and “Graveyard Picnic,” it’s clear that there is no cohesive message behind the songs, but it is apparent that Spike has a lot of ideas competing for space in that warped brain of his. Each song is short and to the point. With the album clocking in at just over 40 minutes, there is no such thing as a filler segment or a throwaway riff on the CD. One important difference between Rampancy and many other goregrind bands is that Spike made no use of transformer s or any other vocal effects in the recording of this disc. Vocally, the album is a formidable effort, as Spike proves to be a truly talented gore vocalist, wrenching a wide variety of demented sounds from his tortured vocal cords. Gore purists will definitely dig this effort, a raging, grooving, brutal homage to the goregrind sound.

For Fans Of: Rompeprop, Dead Infection, Mortician, Cock and Ball Torture, Torsofuck, Last Days of Humanity, Squash Bowels, Regurgitate

Links:

http://www.myspace.com/rampancy696

by Joe Henley