Review by Carl on October 29, 2024.

Sometimes, an album doesn't have to bring anything new or original to the table to tingle my sphincter. Even more, I like my death metal to sound as familiar as possible even, and with as little pretension as possible. A meat-and-potatoes approach to the genre is not an insult in my book, and a band such as Reticulate does just that.

When it comes to music, Reticulate does death metal, rough and tough, very much influenced by the old school masters such as Deicide, Vomitory, early Hypocrisy, and Sinister, with a powdering of "Slowly We Rot" era Obituary on top. The band combines midtempo parts with grinding blast beat eruptions, firmly underpinned by thudding double kick drive and capable riffing throughout and to complete this picture of sturdy death metal-isms, a gruff and hoarse growling vocal approach is acting as a binding factor between all the elements presented. The overall execution is pretty decent barring some slip-ups here and there (nothing catastrophic, though), and the production has found a good balance between old old-school feel and a more contemporary approach, which works well, even if the guitars could've used more power to them. Here, these sound a tad weak within the whole picture, and more grit to them would've been a plus. As a whole though, I can get behind this. Original this ain't, but Reticulate knows how to do death/grind, and they do it well enough in my humble opinion, so what's there to fuss over?

Well, this is there to fuss over: unfortunately, Reticulate found it necessary to include some movie samples in this album, and as is customary whenever a band does something like this, it sucks. Why the hell would I want to sit here listening to an excerpt from "Hostel" (which is a shit movie, by the way), and that for more than a full minute? Another sound byte that caught my attention is that of a firefight of sorts, except it sounds as if someone is making popcorn with an unhealthy amount of rabid enthusiasm. Allow me to quote Ren and Stimpy's Mr Horse on this one: no, sir. I don't like it.

Despite offering up nothing new to the death/grind conga line, I still enjoy Reticulate's debut album well enough, even with the redundant samples in mind. They may not be the best, most brutal, or special act in the style, but what is brought to the party here certainly has its charm. I can't really explain it, but the burly death metal the band belts out just pulls the right strings for me.

Sometimes decent enough is just that. Decent enough.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10