Cannibal Corpse – The Wretched Spawn (Metal Blade)
Well, it’s Cannibal Corpse. You get what you expect to get. Brutal death metal with insane riffs, machine-like drums, and a killer vocalist who growls his way through a series of songs about blood and gore and things like disembowelments, castrations, rotting corpses, etc. Pretty standard, except that the band has been getting more and more technical lately. This album finds them messing around with some ridiculous time-changes, a ton of challenging riffs, and really diverse song constructions. Overall, a great effort from a great band.

Tracks:
1) Fast, brutal, catchy, to the point. Awesome!
2) A ton of guitar squeals (a metal trademark, really) and some sick lyrics.
3) A more mid-paced churner with vocals from below-hell and FCCs.
4) Another fast, thrashier song.
5) They slow it down here, to Obituary speeds, this song just oozes forth with disgust and blech, it’s so sick, damn, those riffs, so catchy... FCC (“cunt” in the choruses) so read along and BLEEEP!
6) Way brutal with short spurts of vocal bile and hate. The drums rule the world. There’s a little breakdown type thing layered over a solo, and the whole experience will make your head spin.
7) Slow, doomy, sludgy, feedback layered head-crusher with vocals that would be the envy of John Tardy.
8) Hah! A title that’s kinda funny considering the band’s history. The song is super-duper bad-ass, too, with the drums doing this odd bass drum triplet that’s way neat.
9) The obligatory castration song. Touchy subject, that’s all I’m saying. Pretty decent song with some wild guitar histrionics later on.
10) Nice triplets and chugga-chug feel with some excellent black metal riffing popping up here and there.
11) Average, at best.
12) Another scorcher of a song with killer riffs, although the drums could use a little more creativity.
13) A maelstrom of terrifying riffs, squeals, and metal-as-fuck breakdowns. Awesome!