Year: 2024
Label: Comatose Music
Uh oh, I wonder if we’re going to Facebook jail or at least quarantine because we use fuck in our URL and title? Italian Corpsefucking Art and their PR guy seem to be aware of this risk, considering how they’ve censored the name in the promo emails. But let’s made a feeble and meaningless stand for freedom of speech and use the naughty word, eh!
To be honest, my bigger qualm about Corpsefucking Art was that they’re obviously something of a joke band. The fact that they name their album Tomatized – and don’t even seem to include overt references to Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes – is proof enough. It’s probably an after effect of spending my formative years listening to black metal, but I have a bit of an allergy towards bands who’re obviously a joke either musically or thematically.
But then I remember Cannabis Corpse exists and is pretty awesome. So I steel myself and put this album on.
If you were to hear Tomatized unaware of it’s somewhat less than serious subject matter, you wouldn’t guess it. What I mean to say is that musically, Corpsefucking Art don’t kid around. This is very traditional, even old school brutal death metal done in a very straight fashion.
This means downtuned buzzsawing guitars, overall rather speedy if not exactly breakneck tempos, gruff growls for vocals, plenty of moshable breakdowns. Everything you’d expect from a brutal death metal album.
On one hand, this means Tomatized is woefully unoriginal. There’s nothing here you haven’t heard before, so if you’re not content with the same old, same old – keep on walking. On the other, these Italians obviously know how to ply their trade: Tomatized is a very competent if not exactly artistically ambitious take on the genre.
The one somewhat serious pitfall of unoriginality Tomatized falls into is a certain sameyness. The songs all sound pretty much the same, and none stand out. Yeah, the tempos differ a bit, but for the most part, it’s the same buzzsawing chugga chugga riffs over which the same growling barks are heaped. Throw in a couple of breakdowns, and Bob’s yer uncle.
That notwithstanding, Tomatized is a good slab of brutal death metal sure to appease fans of bands such as Cannibal Corpse and, heck, why not the aforementioned Cannabis Corpse too! It’s probably a bit too much of a “genre album” to have much wider appeal outside of fans of brutal death metal, but I doubt the guys in the band are too worried about that. Obviously this is how they want to sound – there’s definitely a lot of focus here.
Only Death Is Real 