Artist: Fuck… I’m Dead / Engorged
Country: Australia / USA
Label: No Escape Records
Formats: Split CD
Year: 2002
Terror grind! Two extreme death grind bands share this CD. Fuck… I’m Dead from Australia and Engorged from the US. Together they join forces to bring to market an overwhelming and overpowering disc, which is currently flooded with high-quality death grind bands. So the bands have something to prove.
The split is opened by Fuck… I’m Dead and does so not without merit, showing that they are the better band of the two. Convincingly, they finish an extreme set of songs that are an extension of their previous works. This is how extreme was once meant to be: the band bludgeons away mercilessly. The drum machine is deployed here as a veritable terror machine and the raw guitars really chop up the leftovers. The dual vocals only make it sicker. A top-notch performance!
Engorged can captivate me a little less. The band suffers from a somewhat inferior production than Fuck… I’m Dead and therefore falls a bit short as the second band on the CD. The band brings a mix which is not just pure grindcore, but which also contains elements of thrash metal and noisecore, but above all a good dose of melodic death metal. It comes across as a bit weird to me, as if the band doesn’t yet know exactly what they want. There is melodic playing, then fast or chaotic samples. Overall, it feels rather muddled, something that is obviously nothing new in grindcore, but I feel like it is not meant to be. So I’d rather put the first part on again.
That “proving” Fuck… I’m Dead has done best for me, Engorged will take a bit longer as far as I’m concerned. But all in all, a very nice little split CD, which will find its way to my CD player regularly.
