Artist: Regurgitation
Country: USA
Label: Hells Headbangers Records
Formats: LP
Year: 2025
We usually focus our reviews on new releases and largely ignore the huge number of reissues that keep coming our way. And, as a whole, I try to avoid re-releases that have been done a good number of times before. But rules are there to be broken and exceptions make life more fun. So, at the risk of this review becoming a bit too much of a commercial advertisement, I am still granting Regurgitation’s sole album ‘Tales Of Necrophilia’ a well-deserved a place on our pages.
Their good friends of Hells Headbangers Records have released ‘Tales Of Necrophilia’ a few times in their existence, honouring the beastly record that this band’s debut is. But, while I have loved it since the first time I heard it in the early 00’s, I never came to pick up a physical copy. Yet, with this latest run on vinyl I decided to finally pick a copy, and why not say a few words about this unrivalled album?
To first set a record straight, this is obviously not the same band as what is widely considered to be the predecessor to O.L.D. (Old Lady Driver). Although both being wild and brutal in nature, this Regurgitation was formed during the mid-90’s. ‘Tales Of Necrophilia’, originally released in 1999, followed a more than solid demo tape from 1996 that already set out the confines of what Regurgitation would become. Those years, roughly between 1995 and 2000 are commonly regarded as the “dead” years for Death Metal, “alternative” Metal and the more melodic and symphonic variations of Black Metal clearly were most popular. But in the shades of these upcoming hypes, the USA was starting to develop a new brand of Death Metal that was largely built on the corner stones of prima Cannibal Corpse and Suffocation. It was brutal, grinding and, to a greater or lesser extent, technical with usually a very gory and/or pornographic visual assault.
It was in that musical constellation that Regurgitation started to root, pretty much alongside such names as Broken Hope, Skinless, Pyrexia, Devourment, Dying Fetus, Malignancy, Fleshgrind, Mortal Decay, Internal Bleeding, Cephalic Carnage, Eternal Suffering, Putrid Pile, Deeds Of Flesh, Lividity, Disgorge, Brodequin and many more. Compared to those contemporaries, Regurgitation did nothing extraordinary. At least not in terms of musical originality or in their visual appearance. But with the smooth rolling piece of Brutal Death Metal that is ‘Tales Of Necrophilia’ the band certainly contributed to the ongoing development of this specific genre. With its dynamic song writing, choppy riffs and dual-vocals this album can easily be placed amongst the best records made in these formative years. Not to mention the phat, heavy and blunt production that emphasizes really every individual instrument, consequently leaving much space for both the grooving drums and riffs on the one hand and the technicalities and lead wizardry on the other. As a whole, ‘Tales Of Necrophilia’ still stands proudly, even over a quarter century later. Or maybe even more so now, in a Death Metal landscape that is dominated with soulless Death Metal by bands such as Sanguisugabogg, Frozen Soul and Baest
