Originally written by Erik Thomas
So I get this album from this German band, and I’ve heard the name, and I’m expecting some face blasting grindcore insanity. Nein. Instead I get some extraordinarily mid paced chugging death metal, (which is what I gather a change from their prior output) that makes Six Feet Under look like Bach.
The only remnants of their grindcore past are the multifeces vocals which range from a typical death grunt, a sort of shit swirling down the toilet after a night of curry and Guinness, to a strange ‘speaking underwater’ gurgle. Plenty putrid and stomach churningly foul, the vocals are this CD’s oddly amusing highlight, but they only serve as a steamy, oozing topping on an averagely, and I must say disappointingly unvaried platter.
The thirteen generally lumbering, bass heavy tracks contain no blast beats, and barely any speed up at all. The end result sounds like a sloppy concoction of all of Blood Duster’s and Leng Tch’e’s slower, more bludgeoning moments, and while that may sound entertaining in theory, it isn’t, as CBT lack a sense of catchy groove to make the songs anything but incredibly boring.
And while the music appears to have simplified, in a strange reversal, the lyrics have taken a step up the grindcore evolutionary ladder. Whereas titles like “Big Tit Slappers”, “Lesbian Duo Dildo Fuck”, “G-Spot Gigolo”, littered their last 2 spewings, Egoleech burp out “Another Arch Abraded”, “Complex 27”, and “Thirty Six Degrees Backwards”. But it really doesn’t matter considering both the bowel movement vocals and general malaise of the songs that have little to set them apart from one another. Each song basically sounds virtually identical, and while the downtuned groove of early tracks like “Close Your Eyes and Bear It” and “Blindfolded [Bare] Submissive”, are initially enjoyable , in essence to them not being the expected faceless noise, by track thirteen, “One Inch Left” I’m bored out of my now gurgling mind.
A band that clearly has taken several steps backwards musically and one step laterally lyrically, CBT can no longer be considered grindcore, and the reality of their shift is that even now as a death metal band, they are a pretty dull one at that. I think Talentleech is slightly more appropriate.
