Dismember
Dismember
Regain
Never trust anyone over 30... to not kill you!
If there’s one thing Detroit Red Wings defenseman Chris Chelios, New York Yankees hurler Roger Clemens, Houston Rockets big man Dikembe Mutombo and geriatric porn hero Dave Cummings have all proven, it’s that you can never count the old man out. Though there’s a pretty good chance they’re using HGH, Viagra or a combination of both to stay on top of their game, it’s getting harder and harder to speak of them in the past tense, because motherfuckers still be creating history. The world of death metal has offered up Sweden’s Dismember for the “Geezers Still Doin’ Good” category, as these Sverige originals continue to truck along like a nitroglycerine-powered kill car on their “untitled” eighth album.
There have been a few slip-ups in Dismember’s bloody career; sure, they may have repeated themselves on more than a few occasions, but by using extreme music’s HGH/Viagra equivalent—a brutal, chainsaw-through-oak guitar sound and gussied up Autopsy, Repulsion and Iron Maiden riffs (check out the curveball conclusion to “Under a Bloodred Sky”)—Dismember has the power to have any listener thinking it’s 1991, banging their receding hairlines and tearing through their closets looking for whatever oversized longsleeves they haven’t already sold on eBay. This entire album drips with claret-spraying intensity; “Death Conquers All” and “Legion” are played with drag strip speed, “The Hills Have Eyes” and “Combat Fatigue” sound like outtakes from Like an Ever Flowing Stream, and “No Honor in Death” and “Black Sun” churn and coruscate with a mid-paced sadism that should have you thinking twice about what your grandfather is doing rattling around in the steak knife drawer in the middle of the night. —Kevin Stewart-Panko
