ABORTED

Belgium's ABORTED spit bile, other assorted bodily fluids and just about every murderously inhuman thought they can at the listener for the full thirty-eight minutes of their debut outing for France's Listenable Records. But you shouldn't be too intimidated by this, because when said sonic pretensions are set aside and dictionary-defying titles like "Nailed Through Her Cunt" (yawn!),"Sphinctral Enthrallment" (phhht!) and "Eructations Of Carnal Artistry" (eh?) stripped away, they're barely sharp enough to leave you with a niggling paper cut.

Just for a change, it's not necessarily the clumsy execution of ABORTED's material that marks them down — although, predictably, they do like to venture into characteristically cumbersome "hyperblast" territory. Nope, they're certainly passable in the tightness stakes — passable enough, as it happens, to be buried in the ground alongside all the other tightly wound and tedious MORBID ANGEL/CANNIBAL CORPSE/DEICIDE imitators, and forgotten about.

If this damning indictment might seem a little harsh on ABORTED, then it should be noted that their riffs are wholly interchangeable, bar the odd flourish of squeals. You could also argue that they're possibly unlucky to be the whipping boys for the aforementioned umpteen bands peddling the same old gore-flecked wares — but, come to think of it, when the between-song horror movie/true crime samples on "Engineering..." prove more of a distraction than the music, there is clearly something amiss.

A classic case of shock tactics turning out to be a shocking waste of your attention span.