Title: Self Titled
Label: Old Lion Recordings
Release Date: 5 March 2018
Country: Indonesia
There is always something sick and wicked in the East part of the world. And just because of this, there are a lot of goregrind, porngrind and brutal blasting death metal acts coming from there. With sick cover arts and lyrics. These were my first thoughts when I heard of Vaginal Mutilation (what a name!) and saw their cover art (what a cover art!) with the mandatory hard-to- read logo.
The four-piece band originates from Indonesia, stating to play brutal slamming death metal. However, their self titled EP actually caught me by surprise me when I gave it a listen. It is built on heavy death metal and hard-core riffs and some catchy groove parts! It is not noise, slams and blast beats. And despite of the honestly gore/pormgrind titles of the tracks about sexual violence and abasement, and deep guttural pig vocals, I consider the album more into the death spectrum containing a mixture of elements pertaining to other styles. I found a lot of influences in general which is not bad for the fans of the the genre. There is a clear difference in the production and the direction of the first three songs on the record and the rest three. In the beginning production is more crisp, the drums sound is definitely not good. Overall first two tracks - Tragedy Ryan Jombang and Butcher of Anal Canal are different in terms of composing too – slower, hard-core- ish with grind moments, and vocals which simply are not fitting for me there. Birahi Getar Klitoris is kind of transitional to the second part of the EP where the songs are more sonorous, dense, into the death metal spectrum.
And my second part of the album is really the one I like. This should be the direction in which the band to continue. Jugun Ianfu (meaning sexual slavery during the Japanese colonial by their army) is a good mixture of melodic death metal and hard-core main riffs and tempos, and a short lyrical romantic end. Human Trafficking is a very good death metal track with the typical Florida riffs and solo (!). From other hand, the last track - Free sex is not the answer, could be another transition towards the first part of the record if you want to play it again from the beginning. I would go again from track 3 though. I am sure that the die-hards for the style will like this EP. Overall, for me it is a strange EP though. It couldn’t really convince me solidly about its strengths. In my opinion the band needs to find their direction, soundwise and stylewise. I think that if they decide to stay more in the death metal part and do change the vocals more into the death metal templates, they could only benefit of. It could be also the recording production of the album, which creates that feeling in me about too much not exciting different elements in this EP currently. 5/10 By Count Vlad
Band
Label
Bandcamp
5/10 Floating in the sea of mediocrity
