200 STAB WOUNDS
Manual Manic Procedures
Metal Blade Records
The American death metal underground is particularly vibrant these days, with new-ish additions likeGATECREEPER, FROZEN SOUL, CREEPING DEATH, TOMBSTONER, UNDEATH, and the unlikely - and nearly unpronounceable - SANGUISUGABOGG delivering flesh-ripping work that puts a contemporary spin on old school death metal, while BLOOD INCANTATION and HORRENDOUS operate on the weirder fringes. And it is connecting with an ever-expanding "base", as it were.
Cleveland's 200 STAB WOUNDS is another such "up and comer" that has established itself among the new death metal elite, and in a rather short time. After issuing the debut EP Piles of Festering Decomposition in 2020 and first full-length Slave To The Scalpel a year later on Maggot Stomp Records, then touring like mad, the quartet was snapped up by Metal Blade Records, which issued the "Masters of Morbidity" standalone single a year ago.
With its second full-length, Manual Manic Procedures, the band continues to build on its already formidable reputation for top-notch, gore-obsessed yet groove-laden death metal. The album's gloriously gross, and far less cartoonish, cover art shows 200 STAB WOUNDS means business even before the needle drops.
Once it does, the band delivers a blood-drenched, blast-and-chug battering that takes the old school curb stomp of Scalpel and kicks up the velocity and heft, adding a thrash metal sensibility that recalls pre-Roots SEPULTURA with a modern, POWER TRIP-py punch. And those are two great tastes that go great together.
As corrosive and brutal as Procedures may be - and it's plenty of both, to be sure - it is also quite catchy and consistently headbang-able thanks to the abundant galloping grooves, heaving hooks and simple but effective melodic flourishes the band delivers with abandon, like OBITUARY on crank. The title track, "Flesh From Within" and the closing one-two of "Ride The Flatline" and "Parricide" offer the near perfect blend of velocity, technical flair and chunkiness, while album opener "Hands Of Eternity" adds black metally trem guitars to get things off to a rousing start once its eerie Italian splatter film-inspired intro fades.
"Defiled Gestation" ratchets up the bottom end by way of Owen Pooley's double-bass rolls and Ezra Cook's bulldozing basslines, bringing to mind BOLT THROWER with its brown sound rhythm. The blitzkrieg "Gross Abuse" and delightfully icky "Release The Stench" are equally vicious, if not more so as Steve Buhl's gruff, shouty vocals deliver lines like "Eat your face, tell you how it tastes" with fiendish glee.
The two-part instrumental "Led To The Chamber"/"Liquified" provides the only real break in the action of this murderously tidy piece of work - nine songs in just over 29 minutes - circling back to the Fulci/Argento film score creepiness of the album opening before crashing riffs descend and the discordance builds to a clangorous finale.
Procedures is a step up over the already quite stellar Scalpel in just about every area. The songs are better and more varied, the production is crisper and beefier, and the band is heavier, more seasoned and sounds more mature, even if it remains - as sentiments like "Skin infection creating sores, violent killing, I need gore" would indicate - as sick as ever.
4.0 Out Of 5.0
