Straight from Italy, this threesome is all about the spreading
of love, Christianity, and the magic of unicorns. Nah, just kidding.
Balatonizer's first full-length, "Occlused In Ottusity", is all about sick,
gore-drenched brutal death metal with borderline elements of goregrind.
Actually, imagine Mortician if they could actually, you know, write
memorable songs and play their instruments while keeping the same brutal intensity. Mix that with early Pungent Stench, and the end result would sound a little something like Balatonizer.
As is typical of this style of music, the vocals lean towards the dry,
low guttural growls with the occasional mid-tone rasp thrown in for
good measure. Due to the muddy nature of this production, the guitar and bass combine to form a buzzsaw of stringy sound, but with a technical touch among their brutality...but thankfully this is very, very light on the pinch harmonics. Topping everything off is the drum machine which
is actually well programmed and doesn't sound bad even when used at
practically inhuman speeds. It's nice to see some bands with a taste for
the brutal use a drum machine as an instrument instead of a pie filler.
Also from this trio of gore-swimming Italians, there are plenty of Italian movie samples to kick off certain songs. While they are not overused, which is a nice touch to add a little punctuation to a song or two, they do like to dedicate entire tracks to just the samples which can be a little annoying. Along those same lines, two of their songs have been dedicated to certain people: "Caimme" which is dedicated to Alfredo Li Bassi's character "Carmello" in the Italian film "Mary Forever"; and "Macabrotic Poetry" which is dedicated to the MotoGP racer, Valentino Rossi. Interesting selection, especially after browsing over the artwork inside the CD booklet which depicts the band getting transformed into hulking man-beasts and slaughtering a city of people. I would have thought they would dedicate songs to people like Alistair Crowley and David Berkowitz. Anyway...
Brutal speed is what Balatonizer seem to accomplish best. They tend to
be paced anywhere from "fast" to "light speed", which is nothing new
for this genre, but the rare slower material as witnessed in songs like
"Sbigottit" and "Occlused In Ottusity" are a crushing war machine, and
hopefully we'll hear more stuff like it in the future as it is absolutely pulverizing. Also unique for a band of this caliber is their ability to keep songs unique from each other and fresh over repeated listens. The results are a short album only 25:21 in length (not including their video for "Muscular Prevarication") which can deliver a fierce amount of brutality, technical charm, and stand up to repeated listens.
Other than the video, which must be noted as being a surprisingly
well-done and polished sped-up footage of the band playing/goofing around(regardless of the death metal vocals without the use of a mic which always looks goofy), this is a decent bang for your buck. Not including full tracks containing movie samples, there's not a bad song on it.Personal favorites include: "Ciccio Tagliavia", "Abomination Of Triviality", "Occlusinated Eyes Convergence", "From The Obsolation To The Obliteration", and "Sbigottit". A great acquisition for fans of brutal death.
Rate: A

By Shevy