Review by Carl on December 27, 2020.

Texas death metal or, if you will, TXDM. It conjures up images of burly men standing around a barbeque swigging beer and grunting at each other. Joking aside, I'll admit that whenever I see that TXDM logo on a release, I immediately buy it. You know you'll get a good dose of brutal death metal without any unnecessary frills. Just a good pummeling around the head, no more, no less. And a good pummeling is what Defleshed and Gutted has to offer. More even, it's quite the severe beating that they have in store!

If you're familiar with drummer Joseph Carillo's other band Devour the Unborn, there will be no surprises to be found on this one. It's kinda like a more primitive version of Devourment. The guitars are downtuned all the way to the floor and the vocals are gutturals so deep they almost make Chris Barnes sound like Celine Dion. The aforementioned drummer keeps it all tight together with blasts, slams and double kicks and I find it hard to keep sitting still while listening to this. I don't think that there is even one melodic note on the whole album and for a musical neanderthal like me that's a big plus!

The production on this album is simply crushing. After the first couple of listens I was blown away by the heaviness of the overall sound, but after a while I started to notice some details I missed at first. If you pay attention you can hear the bass guitar in the mix which adds to the crushing sound of the music. Another thing I didn't notice at first is that the sound of the drums is better than your basic brutal death metal album. A lot of brutal death percussionists use triggers, which makes the drums sound like old fashioned typewriters, but in this case they sound way more organic, albeit slightly compressed. In a few words, the album sounds excellent.

Detractors of the genre will probably say that this album is like listening to one long song and I understand where that comes from. All the tracks are composed of the same few ingredients and the heavy production gives all songs a pretty uniform sound. I don't mind such things but I will admit that if variation is your bag then this is not the album for you. I, on the other hand, enjoy this beast of an album just for what it is: a well produced, heavy as fuck, no frills slam death banger that I will recommend to every fan of the brutal death metal genre.

Oh, and before I forget: don't fucking mess with Texas!

Rating: 8 out of 10