Around the beginning of the month The Great Mackintosh was sifting through the piles of mail that The Metal Wanderlust receives as is his want, when a certain email took his fancy. It went as thus.
“Hi. This is Dan from the New band ACTS OF SWINE! Death metal old school! I have a link here for you to download the brand new debut album! Thanks for considering us for review!”
Short – straight to the point, You cheeky bugger, you already had me at ‘Death Metal Old School’. I do like a band that doesn’t fuck around so to speak. I don’t care how many fucking awards you have won in local talent shows nor how many times you have toured with blah blah blah, I really couldn’t give a dried pigs ear pal, just tell me what you are and what you want. Easy. So, investigate I did, and extremely pleased with the result,I am.
AOS (as we shall know refer to them in the principle of keeping things simple stupid), bring their particular brand of OSDM buggery to us from ye merry olde USA, and are at this current place in time a two piece act. They consist of two little piggies, Daniel Geunther on all instrumentation, and one Brian Worth on vokills. That’s it, no more members, and this is a very surprising thing straight from the outset and one that only made this effort even more spectacular! Why do I say this? Well, keep reading ya boofhead and find out!
This is not a very hard album to review for a couple of very simple facts. A) It is indeed made up almost entirely of my very favorite subject matter, that being Death Metal. The other bits that are in there are merely the gaps between the songs, so therefore don’t count, and b) It is so unbelievably heavy and well written that in the case that it fails to elicit any response from those around you, you may want to check their pulses, hearing, or a dead giveaway for those that are not into this kind if thing – their facial expressions. If they are still, or not recoiling in sheer horror, then they are either clinically dead or you just don’t have it fucking loud enough then do you boyo.
Shall we begin? Why not.So these Acts of Swine amount to ten tracks of sheer and utter filthy grunting goodness. If we were to compare each song to an actual pig, they would have to be giant wild boar, about 6 foot high,with razor sharp tusks,and a hide that is practically impervious to anything. Barring a small tactical nuclear warhead, nothing can hurt these enormous fuckers, and guess what,they are all stomping and snorting around in your favourite garden bed, you know, the one with the pansies in it.
Opener “Into Misery” is a very aptly named song. This particular little porcine beast leads the onslaught with guttural lyrics and a thick chunky hide made out of the crossing of a heavy as all fuck riff section, pounding drum buggery and musical mayhem. Fear not though, this is not at all chaos, if anything it is well paced and well thought out mayhem of the highest order. Tempo changes abound, and keep you well on your toes. If you think you have this down pat within the first minute or so, you are waaaaay fucking wrong buddy.
Cranky pissed off garden wrecker number two appears in the shape of “Bludgeoned”, and smacks you around the head with a hammer made of lead. If yet again they haven’t just nailed the song in the title,I will never eat bacon again. At this point we need to raise one thing, that being the drums. Yes, they are programmed, and yes they would trigger our good friend Chevy-dune de beer into some sort of state of anaphylaxis, and good riddance to the prick anyway. The programming is superb, and if you hadn’t read the fact that this is a two little piggy band, you would not know the difference anyway, so hats off to Dan for being so darned fucking good! The pacing and delivery of said drums is just fantastic.
This also needs to be said, because I can see you drawing your crossbow of comparison in the hope that you know exactly who these guys may sound like. Fire away I say, and watch the bolts being deflected by just how hard the skin of these feral monstrosities is! Your comparisons are just a sign of laziness, and these sweet little piggies are throwing them right back in your face with total accuracy and deadly delivery! Good, now let us continue.
I’m not going to dissect every one of these boar like some, I would rather you do your own autopsy, but here for those pig headed enough to have read so far,are some joyous highlights. “Crib Cage” has a mid section of utterly insane fucked up sounding backwards arsed horror running over one hell of a rib,I mean riff. “Conceal and Kill” has some absolutely fabulous bass lines floating around some very meaty guitar and is the perfect example of mid paced heavy, heavy shit. “Images of Tragedy” follows suit, more chunky lines of sheer nastiness, and vocals that surely must be covered in mud. Rather soothing if you are of the aforementioned swine family.
“The Final Epoch” is in itself, a piece of Death Metal purity. No prize pigs on display here, just good plain flat out old school intent and chugging awesomeness. The mid section again taking an off kilter approach before launching back into killer riffery and garden wrecking greatness. Sure as shit the final passages of this song are simply the finest example of what AOS represent, that being sounding like everything we want from our beloved Death Metal. The end? Well it’s delivered to you as these humongous pissed off porkers have flattened all your pansies, and all pansies in general with “Lord of The Flies”. I have no idea if it’s a reference to the classic book, or the fact that you now have a ton of pig poop all over the place and the flies are enjoying it.
Regardless, you should be honoured and thankful that you are still alive after this album. Such greatness only comes around now and then, and even given the fact that so many awesome bands young and old are currently giving us their all, this one does stand proudly amongst the highest of them. All ten of these magnificent swine stand at once and bow to you as they then bugger off and find more shit to wreck, and more they surely shall. OSDM at it’s finest.
Beware all pansies. Beware everyone. This is better than the finest crackling you have ever had, sadistically speaking of course.
Rating – 5/5
Find the piggery here!
https://actsofswine.bandcamp.com/
The Metal Wanderlust 