Devourment – Conceived in Sewage
Zahler’s incessant slam suggestions and essay several weeks back perked my interest just enough to give Devourment a chance. 1995 was the year Worm Gear began as a print zine, right at the time when this overly brutal Internal Bleeding meets Suffocation meets your knuckles dragging across the tundra style of what was then know as the “New York” style of sick death metal. The demoes and CDs arrived at the mailbox daily and the flood of this style nearly killed me for all things death metal. Since those days, I have avoided this genre like the plague (the brutal stuff, NOT the tasteful and evil death metal that still rules my world), so I suppose the time is right to roll up my sleeves and try to approach Conceived in Sewage with an open mind and salivating ear.
So now this form of death can be known as “slam”? OK I get it… another irrelevant genre classifier. “Fifty Ton War Machine” gets right to the quick of the descriptive term with meaty mosh breakdowns that stir the pot of sweaty circle piters with skill and a memorable motion in the chunky riffage. Devourment offsets the plod with skilled technical bits of shredding death metal which acts as a sensible offsetting dynamic. Sure the formula has been reduced to a liquified mash over the years by countless bands before and after Devourment, but this band digs in with conviction. As “Fucked with Rats” rages in with minor Morbid Angelisms in the guitar work, a bit of a reprieve from the straight up bloody meat presentation surfaces in the song craft, demonstrating Devourment’s talent. The skill and impressive technical instrumentation of this genre has never been the deterring factor for me. The fact that so many bands here sound the same and continue to reanimate the same 3 styles and do so with the same overused mosh mentality really wears on my patience. Simply put, the whole presentation gets old really quick. Even though Devourment fits into this category with little argument, I found myself compelled to further listen to Conceived in Sewage in its entirety several times.
For one, Erik Rutan’s production talents on this album have given all the instruments a deep and ugly life by way of a clear, though filthy guitar sound and the drums stab through the mix perfectly. The second “charming” quality found giving Conceived in Sewage a fleeting staying power in my player, is the impressive vocal gutturalizations of Mike Majewski. This guy often sounds like he’s gargling with a luke warm can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew and this level of maintained sickness is quite impressive and enjoyable when sitting with this material.
In closing, if you ever described an album you’re listening to as, “Duuude… this is so fucking brutal and siiiick”, then yes, this malignant pack of Texans fornicates the slamming death metal tumor for you. I like it for what it is, but as is the case for most albums perpetuating this long oversexed style of death metal, I really can’t stick with it long enough to champion the cause. -Marty
Relapse Records
Worm Gear 
For the record, Devourment is a genre mainstay, but a band I do NOT recommend—their arrangements make no sense, and what I heard of this new album has lots of crummy vocals ideas–obvious, singing all the beats or sort of deathcore kind of stuff.
It’s easy to dismiss slam if this is the crap you’re judging it by.
Worthwhile slam for the curious:
Accessible and fun stuff—
Dysentery Internal Devastation.
Embrionic Death second demo.
Urogenital Macrophage debut album.
Pathology Awaken to the Suffering.
More challenging material–
Abominable Putridity In the End of Human Existence
Kraanium Post Mortal Coital Fixation.
Saprogenic The Wet Sound of Flesh on Concrete.
Pyrexia Sermon of Mockery.
Afterbirth demo.
Vomit Remnants Supreme Entity.
Check this stuff out.
All of this is better than Devourment kind of stuff.
After reading your Slam essay, I knew that you weren’t giving Devourment your seal of approval. I was just saying that I’m giving bands within this style more of my attention knowing that you are finding elements of worth in the genre these days.
Got it. I feel Devourment represents slam as well as Anthrax represents thrash. One of the big names … and not good.