Italy's very strange and severely brutal Balatonizer have unleashed
their
debut release "Occlused in Ottusity", a 24 minute, 46 second barrage of
guttural-death-gore-grind-core insanity that is nothing short of
intense. You can automatically see the grind influence in the fact that
the album is just under 25 minutes but there are 32 songs (although a
couple of them are just long audio samples from films), the longest
weighing in at 1:27 in length. As that would suggest they play at the
speed of light the good majority of the time, but when they do slow it
down it's face stomping machine-like hammering that is sick as hell.
Inspired by their death/gore-grind metal brothers and founders in
America, Balatonizer take things a step further...in ust about all
aspects.
Mixed among the onslaught of dry and low guttural growls with quick
spikes of mid to high rasps, crushing buzzsaw riffs and blistering
grinds (that go easy on the pinched harmonics), are actual recordings
of local mobsters business deals and conversations between local
criminals in their town of Palermo, Sicily. As you can imagine, that
takes balls to add that material to your album without fear of the
consequences, either that or they are completely insane.
Balatonizer are not without a sense of humour either, the album cover
shows the members characaturized among some sinister looking swine,
then when you open the cover and look around you are greeted by the
guitarists comic book style inlays (he works for Marvel Europe). In the
comic inlays the band is transformed into hulk-like violence craving
beasts, who among the obscene and often pornographic surrounding
imagery end up laying waste to an entire city population. By the time
you are done checking out all the weird and hilarious packaging...the
cd is over, it's well timed at least.
Showing some of the bands interests are the telling dedications. Two
songs are dedicated to certain individuals "Caimme" is dedicated to
Alfredo Li Bassi's character "Carmello" in the Italian movie "Mary
Forever" and the track "Primitivity 46" is dedicated to the near
legendary MotoGP racer Valentino "Veil" Rossi, (who I might add is
probably the most amazing racer ever to ride).
Throughout this disc you hear some very unusual background audio
samples for a metal cd, often thrown into breakdowns or used in quick
pauses of the music, the electronic drum blasts on occassion reveal
themselves to be synthetic, but if you didn't know it at first or
weren't listening that closely you wouldn't notice, a result of solid
programming. From start to finish this album
never lets up, hammering you track after track with psychotic gore
filled
aggression. The production here is decent, not great, could be less
muddy, but it's certainly superior to many other albums in the same
vein out there.
"Occlused in Ottusity" isn't exactly original, many bands do similar
things
quite often and have done for awhile, but overall I don't think anyone
else does this quite the way they do and with all the different aspects
to their music. Balatonizer are just plain fucking odd and interesting.
I am now a fan though, these guys know how to entertain a metal fan
with diverse appreciation for various brutal metal styles.
I would definitely recommend Balatonizer's "Occlused in Ottusity" to
any
serious gore-grind, guttural, or death-grind fans who are looking for
something different that they can sink their teeth into. If you are a
fan of
Mortician, Pungent Stench, Guttural Secrete, or MassMurder and can
imagine them all blended together well then this disc is for you.
However, I think power metal fans might actually have a heart attack if
they listened to this cd.
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