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Deranged: Cut carve rip serve

12/01/12 || BamaHammer

Sweden’s Deranged have never been a band anyone would consider one of death metal’s heavy hitters. I thoroughly enjoyed 2002’s “Plainfield Cemetery” and, uh, that’s it really. But they play that heavily Americanized brand of brutal death metal that’s always been so compatible with my musical taste. When I discovered they were releasing a new album this year, I was just curious enough to check it out.

I really enjoy groovy, tight, well-produced, original death metal. When you do it right, there’s really nothing better. This album, however, is none of those things. It’s repetitious, boring, and sounds like a turd in a blender. I think the biggest disappointment is the general anonymity this band has created for themselves with this release. They are completely indistinguishable from any of the other thousands of shitty cookie monster bands out there who play this exact type of death metal.

Despite spending the entirety of their career in the third tier or so of Swedish death metal, these guys clearly have the potential to write some pretty decent tunes, but on this album it’s just not happening. On first listen, several of the tracks (the opener in particular) actually appealed to me. Granted, I was listening to it through laptop speakers, but I was at least minimally enthused to keep listening. It had a semi-catchy drum part that you could air-drum with relative ease on your desk. Color me “meh.”

After a hearing this album on better speakers, however, you really discover its true ugliness. The production is an absolute mess. It was recorded at Berno, so I half expected it to sound far more polished than this. Many of the guitar riffs are so muddled by distortion and midrange and the incessantly loud drum blasting you can’t even decipher what’s going on, assuming you even care enough to ignore their inherent lackluster weakness.

The vocals are truly pathetic. Martin Schönherr puts forth his best effort to be a poor man’s early-‘90s Chris Barnes, but fails miserably. Assuming those are actually different words he’s grunting, writing lyrics was totally a waste of creative energy for these guys on this album since they’re completely indecipherable and likely stupid. Judging from the cockamamie song titles, I’d say they were probably about cutting up body parts or something. Pretty original shit, right? I thought so. Anywho…

The album does have a few redeeming qualities if you’re willing to accept the mindless repetition and tolerate the shoddy production. As I said before, the opener, “Depraved and Zombified,” is not really that bad of a song. It’s got a little groove here and there, and it’s at least little catchy and memorable. A few of the riffs that you can actually pick out on some other songs are a little groovy if not the least bit technical. Overall though, the album is just brainless blasting alongside generic death metal riffs with cookie monster vocals.

If you’re looking for some really good brutal death metal with interesting, original song structures and a strong production, you won’t find any of it here. Just keep listening to your Cannibal Corpse albums again and again. That will still be more exciting than this.

3,5

Information
Released: 2011
Label: Sevared Records
Website: Deranged MySpace
Band
Martin Schönherr: vocals
Thomas Ahlgren: guitars
Andreas Johansson: bass
Rikard Wermén: drums

Tracklist
01. Depraved and Zombified
02. Limbless Slave
03. Razorsharp Decapitation
04. Slay and Grind
05. Workshed Slaughter
06. Savage Hacksaw Castration
07. Military Death Complete
08. Incise the Flesh
09. Blood on Pale Hands
10. Flesh Rebel 2011

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