Kill Everything - Scorched Earth [Things You Might Have Missed 2018]

Angry Metal Guy

Half the fun of slam is trying to describe what it sounds like while listening to the simplistic yet absurdly entertaining brutality. I find it’s a lot like what would happen if someone took the guttural approach of Chris Barnes on Tomb of the Mutilated, made it equally or more extreme, and then did that over countless variations on this Suffocation riff. It’s far more fun to say that endless chugging heavy riffs with disgusting guttural vocals sounds like getting mauled by a rabid grizzly bear after being gored by a deer and left to die in the woods. Saying something slams so hard that it sounds like getting disemboweled with a chainsaw while being force-fed a live colony of bees is more convincing and appealing than saying that a slam record has a bunch of killer riffs, is well-structured, and is worth listening to. In that spirit, Kill Everything’s debut album Scorched Earth sounds like bungee-jumping with your own intestines after having your skull caved in by a club¹.

Kill Everything acts as a reunion between ex-Devourment members Brian Wynn and Mike Majewski. Wynn played guitar on Molesting the Decapitated, and Majewski played bass there before switching permanently to vocals. Wynn’s chunky eight-string riffs abuse the lowest frets and hardly venture elsewhere. They’re weirdly catchy, using palm-muting in the right spots and brief bursts of speed to keep things from being monotonous. Drums jackhammer away and bass bolsters the riffs. Vocally, Majewski sounds powerful. He’s got a more slam-oriented approach than on Devourment’s latest record Conceived in Sewage, but he still enunciates well and forces his gutturals out of his chest, giving them a full-bodied sound.

While each song is distinct, there’s little to say about them individually. Each is a three-to-four minute bludgeoning, packed with moments to get those hammers thrown, make the knuckles drag on the floor, or get permanently banned from your city’s transit system for crowd-killing some dude wearing a Slipknot shirt on the bus when an especially beefy slam rears its head. If I want to hear slam for a half-hour and remember exactly why I like the genre, a spin of Scorched Earth will do the trick.

If you liked slam and haven’t listened to Kill Everything yet, find a spare half hour of your life and let the music gently caress your innards with a machete and then drop you headfirst into a wood-chipper². Kill Everything will smash your skull with a meat tenderizer and jam your privates into a household blender. Scorched Earth will forcibly drag you to the weight bench. Kill Everything converts your speakers into wimp-crushing weapons, and Scorched Earth is the ten-ton ball in your newly acquired slam cannon. Kill Everything will pickle and jar your entrails. Scorched Earth is a steamroller to the face. Translated out of brutal death metal hyperbole: Kill Everything is a very good band and Scorched Earth is great slam, residing in the cream of the crop for 2018.

Tracks to Help Your Bench Press Stats: “Scorched Earth,” “Thermal Liquidation,” “It’s a Wonderful Knife”

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