Devourment - Molesting the Decapitated (1999)^{Release ID: 11592}

OK, it was very heavy for its time, and kind of unique.  But I never judge an album for its influence.  I'll respect the influence, but I won't use it to judge the music.  It's like what has been aforemention not just by Daniel's review here, but by others: this sounds generic by today's standards.  Why?  Is it because everyone's just copying it?  Partly, but people do the same with the great Ramones debut, which was repetitive but also kind of diversified and ccatchy.  Punk rock was completely new.  This is just a heavier expansion of an already extremely extreme genre pioneered by Suffocation, who remain my favorite brutal death metal band for their three five star works, Effigy of the Forgotten, Pierced from Within and Human Waste.  I avoided Devourment and Echymosis for their obscenely violent lyrics for ages, but I'm caring less and less overtime if it's guttural and unintelligible, but I still went looking for slam acts that didn't have as much violence, and composed a top 50 or so.  So I've got enough albums to compare this one to not just from a brutality perspective, but a writing perspective.  And I have to say that this greatly pails in comparison to Suffocation, who joined Cryptopsy in bringing technicality and brutality together to create something high on imagination and extremity.  The Devourment debut, however, is basically the audio chronicle of a bunch of stupid 20-somethings trying to be as dark, heavy and edgy as possible and relying on that to help.  If it worked for Wes Craven (it actually didn't), it'll work for them, right?  From an influential perspective, yes.  But all of the songs here are samey and copied to the point of no redemption, and the faint moments of creativity are greatly overshadowed by the generic death metal behavior.  Basically, even if the album was heavier to the point of inventing a new subgenre of brutal death metal, it still feels like generic brutal death metal, slam differences aside like the fixation of snare drums.  Basically, stick with Suffocation, because if you play this and Human Waste back to back, hopefully you'll find a greater sense of technical achievement, unless you're just flat-out hypnotized by the idea of heaviness and edginess like a poser.  Devourment basically took Cannibal Corpse's gimmick to a new level, except from what I hear, Cannibal Corpse was better.