Review of Xenomorphic Contamination - Chasm of No Return EP

This tasty little Italian brutal death EP comes to us from two members of Vomit the Soul, Beheaded, Antropofagus, Septycal Gorge, and Putridity. To be honest, I had only heard Antropofagus before checking out this EP, but given that this has been a steady player for me all month, I will have to look into the others.

Chasm of No Return isn’t just groovy and brutal and vaguely hypnotic – like all good brutal death or slam – it also grabs your attention right away with a series of blackened melodies that carve through opening track “Metamorphic Oblivion.” The burbling vocals – so guttural that they might as well be called borborygmic (go look it up) – and relentless, churning rhythm section keep the track moving, but it’s these sinister melodies (shades of Belphegor or Behemoth) that make it really entertaining. The follow-up tracks trade some of that melody and menace for a cold, technical, Decapitated-like sheen. They’re a bit choppier, and there are frequent change-ups in both, but they’re never too showy, and the tracks never devolve into noodly chaos.

If these guys decide to do a full-length – and I hope they do – I’d love to hear more compositions like the opener. It had a near-perfect blend of technicality, groove, melody and brutality. Far more engaging than most of the polysyllabic, largely amelodic brutal/slam acts out there (Cephalotripsy, Abominable Putridity, Guttural Engorgement, take your pick).

Perhaps it’s the band name and cover art, but I imagined malevolent aliens strapping down their abducted human prey and playing this album to torture or bewilder them – but to those of us that like this sort of thing, it would just flow past like a gentle stream. A stream of foamy, pus-flecked and alien-contaminated blood, of course, but a gentle stream nonetheless.