AVULSED

When you've been in a band for two decades, you're either pushing forty or past it, and you still feel the need to release a sequel to a song called "Infernal Haemorrhoids", the world has no right to expect major progression or mellowing out from you. Dave Rotten has been fronting Spain's extreme death metal gore-gurglers AVULSED since 1991, and with new rancid hunk of meat "Nullo: The Pleasure of Self-Mutilation", he and the band definitely stick with what's made them renowned in the bowels of the underground for so long.

This is brutal, unforgiving death metal influenced by the American old school, with low, guttural, burping vocals, fast no-frills riffing and flaying, organic blast beats. Unlike many of their long-dormant or creatively stagnant contemporaries, though, AVULSED actually cough up parts that could be recognized as choruses, and they seed their punishing assaults with occasional hooks and flourishes of midtempo groove (most decidedly not of a hardcore breakdown variety) to give their songs a little dramatic flair. Expressive solos like the short-but-sweet bit at 2:40 of "Maggotfilled", and insidious little melodies like the one running through the chorus of the title track, really open things up, and prevent monotony from taking over.

It's definitely not innovative, and you won't find any surprises on "Nullo", although consistent songwriting and attention to detail in the realm of low-budget gore-metal could themselves be considered surprising. The best thing about AVULSED is that they've managed to mature without progressing — that sounds like I'm slamming them, but I'm not. They've evolved as players, and their arrangements and ideas are clearly the product of seasoned veterans with some solid death metal history behind them — but they're still doing it all in service to the same bloodsoaked atavistic muse that Dave Rotten worshiped twenty years ago. If AVULSED haven't turned into a rock and roll band by now, or gone off on any hardcore or prog tangents, it seems safe to say that they plan to carry the torch for undiluted death metal for life, with ever sharpening focus and skill.

"Nullo"'s eleven tracks are augmented on this US release by six bonus cuts, taken from 2006's "Reanimations" import. While a grinding gore romp through W.A.S.P. standard "I Wanna Be Somebody" is hard to take as anything but comedy, their covers of EXODUS classic "Piranha" and GOREFEST's "Mental Misery" are pretty fucking wicked, and make an already recommended death metal album even more potent.