Scalpel
Methods to Delusion

Based on the cover, name and album title, I was fully bracing for some thrash metal here, but it turns out Massachusetts’ Scalpel are a death metal band with a fondness of older 90s death metal and East Coast Death metal.

There’s not much that needs to much explanation here. Scalpel’s second effort of no frills death metal goodness. Not game changing or anything but it crosses all the check boxes: shredding guitars, groove, blasts, dual growls, throbbing bass and competent song writing fill all 29 minutes and 10 songs.

You can hear almost every significant US/international death metal bands and some more underground ones here in the influences: Morbid Angel, Death, Suffocation, Cryptopsy, Carcass, Cannibal Corpse, Morta Skuld, Eternal Suffering et al all can be heard in standout tracks “Feeding the Worm”, “The Woodsman part II”, “Lung Butter” and “Brooding in the Gloom”.

They stray little from the path as there are no vast doomy segments or anything to ambitious, maybe a little sneaky melody here and there (“Intensified Festering”)  Just gnarly, visceral, no frills death metal, as it should be.

[Visit the band's website]
Written by Erik T
March 6th, 2018

Comments

  1. Commented by: cryptofascist

    Love Scalpel! I like to call them “quality death metal” which may have been a term you coined at one time in a past review. They do death metal and do it well!


  2. Commented by: Nick Taxidermy

    I love this except that snare. good god, it’s just “bongbongbongbong” all the time.


  3. Commented by: M Budziszewski

    Snare is fine. Not terribly out of place. The kick drum sound is quite noticeably wonky. Regardless it’s cool material.


Leave a Reply

Privacy notice: When you submit a comment, your creditentials, message and IP address will be logged. A cookie will also be created on your browser with your chosen name and email, so that you do not need to type them again to post a new comment. All post and details will also go through an automatic spam check via Akismet's servers and need to be manually approved (so don't wonder about the delay). We purge our logs from your meta-data at frequent intervals.

  • Wolfbrigade - Life Knife Death
  • Vended - Vended
  • Vafurlogi - Í vökulli áþján
  • PeelingFlesh - The G Code
  • 1349 - The Wolf and the King
  • Flotsam and Jetsam - I Am the Weapon
  • Glacial Tomb - Lightless Expanse
  • Kanonenfieber - Die Urkatastrophe
  • Deceased - Children of the Morgue
  • The Black Dahlia Murder - Servitude
  • Hammerfilosofi - SOLUS ( Igne Natura Renovator Integra) EP
  • Emasculator  - The Disfigured and the Divine EP
  • Laceration - I Erode
  • Servant - Death Devil Magick
  • Sur Austru - Datura Străhiarelor