Aborted - Global Flatline(2012)

About fucking time. Aborted has dabbled in melodic experiments for far too long (not that they were bad, Strychine.213 was pretty good) and has finally went back to its splanchnic roots of goregrind. Goregrind is an oversaturated genre nowadays, with all these back-alley bands that think that a bunch of 900 BPM blast beats, mindless detuned grooves, and horrible guest vocals by frogs, dogs, and bulls make a goregrind band good. It's like an abortion with a kick in the stomach compared to a suction-aspiration one. Well, the master-butcher has returned, and he definitely showed these superfluous dilettantes how to wear the apron and use the power-tools without disemboweling themselves like fucking idiots.


This album is a welcome relief; feels like the goregrind of the old pantheon, tinged with obvious modern (in a good way) influences. This album is great because it completely revitalized the genre, and can easily bring together the veteran metalheads with the younger generation, without causing them to kill each other in order to prove which one's the scenester. It takes the medical-malignancy theme, low-pitched vocals, and firm velocities, chops them up, cooks (or keeps them raw, if you will), and serves it in a dish of blood-drenched human bones and skin.


The album also features solid guest vocals from Keijo Niinimaa (Rotten Sound), Trevor Strnad (The Black Dahlia Murder), Jason Netherton (Misery Index), and Julien Truchan (Benighted), all bands I love. Even though TBDM's Strnad doesn't really fit in the "grindcore" setting, he still executes his role like a freshly manufactured scalpel, yet to cut the skin. The album starts with some apocalyptic news, a dying heart monitor, and basically impending doom. And that shit delivers. The album feels like being chased by a horde of ravenous flesh-eating zombies, or getting a premature autopsy, whatever floats your boat. Superb songwriting combined with neckbreaking speed with actual song structure is an obvious choice of a soundtrack to a zombie apocalypse.


Aborted definitely delivers in skin-cracking lashing, without killing your ass, but making sure you're going to suffer until the end. Lo and behold, high and low pitches, fast and slow playing, guitar and bass solos. Creepy 80s B-Movie horror-like guitar harmonies and just a general atmosphere of blood, gore, viscera, and everything pathologically erroneous make this album awesome. Relish this goregrind masterpiece; there's enough entrails and guts for everyone to sink their hungry blades and teeth (or... other stuff, if that's your thing) into.


Rating: 9/10