Taipei Metal

Review: Offal - Macabre Rampages and Splatter Savages

Brazilian gore mongers Offal have returned with their latest disc of horror-inspired gratuitous carnage, Macabre Rampages and Splatter Savages. The album sets the tone with an eponymous intro that is dark, old school, and twisted, with some modern slam and psychopathic bounce. Things then kick off in earnest with “Feast for the Dead”, with its dripping wet, gory vocals, simplistic and menacing lead riffs, and old school rhythms. The focus is on atmosphere and blunt brutality, with tips of the hollowed out cranium to acts such as General Surgery, Death Breath, Autopsy, and Massacre. Offal takes the listener back to the dead old days when true evil in death metal first revealed its disgusting, hybrid form.

“Trial of the Undead” is up next, one of several songs on the album to feature sickening clips of horror and splatter films in their intros. The chugging introductory riff and rumbling bass are testaments to the excellent production on the album that is clear but not too modern. Low end vocals from the gut layered with high end shrieks from the nasal cavities trade off, interacting with slow, deliberate leads that give the impression of a horror movie freak-scape. The next track switches things up a bit, as “Putr-essence” is mid-paced death punk, somewhat similar to splatter punk—a tribute to rotten flesh with pinch harmonic squeals, and simple but catchy and maliciously morbid solo work that delves into whammy bar dives.

Yet another side of Offal emerges in the brief foray into goregrind territory, “The Eye Gouging”. This song utilizes a vocal transformer along with pure goregrind stomp and simplicity. Then comes “The Cold Grips of Death”, equipped with the same infectious groove. Old school worship runs rampant along with nods to true “Metal of Death” acts such as Crypticus and Necrovorous, along with any band the almighty Elektrocutioner has ever beaten the skins for.

Offal holds true to their sound throughout the album, while offering up enough variety in their dalliances between old school death metal and dirty goregrind. They keep things dark and simple and let the blood flow from the bottomless fountain. Some songs, such as “Mortuary Waste”, do tend to drag a bit, but it’s a purposeful drag of the corpse—all for effect, just as Hitchcock made it his explicit goal to torture his audiences for as long as possible. The classic sound Offal has cultivated doesn’t come off as being disingenuous in the least. This band isn’t faking anything or trying to be ironic. They live it, breathe it, and kill for it, metaphorically speaking of course.

Among this album’s 12 tracks are four instrumentals, which seems like a hefty number for an album of any length, but the tracks sans vocals are catchy in their own right and no less convincing in their expressions of horror-obsession and gore perversion. The second last full song, “Death’s Curse”, has a clip from the classic Friday the 13th series, and goes from full on blast to some heady slam. Closing out the CD is the instrumental “Terrore in Giallo”, which sounds a bit like something Japan’s Zombie Ritual might put out, or any of the demented bands on Razorback Records blood drenched and admirable roster.

Offal proves that twenty percent skill and 80 percent genuine emotion beats 80 percent skill and 20 percent emotion every time out. Macabre Rampages and Splatter Savages is for true fans of bloody horror worship and the classic days of death metal’s initial insurgence.