Review by Carl on January 6, 2022.

Butcher ABC is one of those names that seem to have been around for ages, and still it took me until recently to check them out. Wanna know why? Because I found their moniker sound ridiculous, that's why! After checking out this particular album on YouTube, I had to conclude that I was a dumbass for that.

Because this stuff kicks ass, dammit! Their style is a tribute to old school death metal and grindcore, sometimes to the point of plagiarism. As a whole their style had me thinking of a cross between "Realm Of Chaos" era Bolt Thrower, Coffins, Exhumed, Terrorizer, Divine Eve and even the old Swedish crusty death metal act Comecon's first album. Down tuned chugging alternates with pounding d-beat hammering and furious blasting, with mid tempo parts and some touches of groove added to give it all some variation, to great effect. During their crustier moments they even had me thinking of death/crust bands like Sanctum or Stormcrow, with the vocals reminding me of Death Strike/Master's Paul Speckmann's delivery throughout. The use of a second, down pitched, voice adds to the suspense, with the band being smart enough to not overdo it with this. The songs all have a lot of drive behind them and matters proceed like crazy, leaving the listener not a lot of time to gasp for air between them, until the final track that is. Album closer 'North Of Hell' is a slower, groovier composition that had me thinking of Cathedral's later work, but on steroids. The production on here is awesome: heavy like a concrete elephant, with all instrumentation clearly audible, even the bass guitar. This production provides the perfect platform to allow the music to hammer the listener into submission. This quite simply is a death/grind maniac's wet dream!

As mentioned before, the band borders on plagiarism at times, and even crosses that border at times. Take 'Death In Hell', where they borrow the main riff from Celtic Frost's "Morbid Tales". The same happens at the start of 'House Of Meats', where they recycle Bolt Thrower's legendary "World Eater" opening riff, 'Death By Napalm' has a riff from (of course) Napalm Death's "Suffer The Children" and there's a part in 'Maximum Rotting Corpse' that I know is by another band, it just doesn't come to mind who right now, and there's even more. The thing is, though, this doesn't feel like plagiarism, it's in tribute of, and this concept has been extended to the artwork (on the European version at least) and song titles. Both album title and cover are (not very subtle) nods to Slayer and their "South Of Heaven" album, and in the booklet I find winks and nods all over. There's the Nuclear Death "Bride Of Insect" spider, the guy with the voodoo doll from Napalm Death's "Utopia Banished" and the crucified man from Morbid Angel's "Thy Kingdom Come", with each of these acts being name checked in the song titles. Me, being the nerd that I am, I just love this concept and their message is clear: Butcher ABC is a band that consists of fans in the first place, with musicians as second.

This is a great release if you're into stuff like Frightmare, General Surgery, Cretin and other bands like that. It contains massive sounding death/grind that is well executed and should be able to satisfy all fans of the style, and for the nerdier types, like me, there's lots of fun to be had with the game of "guess the reference" in the artwork, music and song titles. Recommended!

Rating 8.5 out of 10