Review by Sonny for Brutality - Screams of Anguish (1993)

Brutality were unknown to me prior to listening to this (surprise, surprise), but are another product of the Nineties' Florida death metal scene that spawned so many DM classics and one listen to Screams of Anguish and it is obvious that it originated in Tampa. While it does possess the brutality of the classic Tampa sound, it also has a slight technical bent to it that, presumably, differentiated it from the Morbid Angels and Deicides of the time. It isn't excessively technical and Brutality are as capable of being wilfully bludgeoning as any other of Tampa's death metal denizens, but there is enough there to set it apart. The lead work in particular is something that caught my ear, with the howling solos being one of my favourite aspects of the album as their scalpel-like sharpness provides a perfect counterpoint to the blunt force trauma of the bludgeoning rhythm work. Vocalist Scott Reigel has a classic death metal style of ascerbic growling that sounds like it could strip paint and the rhythm section provides the perfect heavy-boned skeleton on which guitarists Don Gates and Jay Fernandez can hang their muscular riffs.

One point of contention for me was the two interludes, Sympathy and Spirit World, which I think sucked the velocity out of the album. During each of these breaks in the sonic battery I was champing at the bit for them to launch back into the attack and felt these acted like speed bumps on a racetrack, being superfluous and disruptive of the flow. I understand the inclusion and maybe the band wanted to give the listener a respite and a chance to regroup before setting about them once more, but without them in the tracklisting I think we would have had a perfect blistering and belligerent sub-forty minute album.

Anyway, minor tracklisting niggle aside, this is an album I enjoyed massively with it sitting somewhere between early Deicide and mid-era Death to my ears with those searing solos being the big take away for me. On the strength of this debut, I really can't believe that these guys aren't as big a name in the Florida scene as Death, Deicide or Morbid Angel.