Abhorrence
Completely Vulgar

Have you ever wondered how the finnish death metal sounded in the early days? Have you ever wondered what evolved into bands like Amorphis and Impaled Nazarene? If the answer to either of these questions is yes then this might be right up your alley, Abhorrence was one of those bands who were pioneers in the early days of finnish death metal. They were not active for long as they were founded in 1989 and ended in 1990 after having released one EP but also a demo. All of their work is now being rereleased in a compilation with a repulsive cover and as an added bonus we have songs from a live show in Turku, Finland as well as some recorded rehearsal room recordings just to spice it all up a bit. A question that arises when looking at all of this around this album is wether it is really worth being rereleased, does it serve a purpose? and is it good enough to be released today?

This works was all made in 1990 so as you might suppose it is death metal of that era, the first five tracks is from their latest studio work the EP that was self titled and it sounds fresh for the time and also quite imaginative for a death metal work. The three following track is from their demo and it is a bit more straight up death metal, it sounds older than the first and with a rougher production. Then we have a group of live tracks which sounds abhorrent to be honest, the sound on these recordings is just dreadful like a racket of noise crowned by some polar bear trying to sing or be heard through that racket. After that the album ends with two rehearsal room recordings which doesn’t sound that brilliant either. And if you don’t think that one hour of varying sound quality is enough there’s aways the vinyl solution with five tracks as an added bonus but judging from the quality of the ending two tracks and considering that the bonus for the vinyl is of the same kind as those, I fear that those tracks sounds rather repulsive as well. I haven’t heard them though so that is only a guess and nothing else, I only got the CD-version and it plays of an hour on seventeen tracks and as I said the sound quality varies from rather good to rather dreadful.

The first five tracks from their self titled EP originally are quite good, it shows a bit of imagination and as I said those tracks are quite good. The following three are acceptable as well, as fillers I think you can say. After that though it is just crap, it sounds terrible and I don’t really see a point in releasing such things. I do think they could have released the demo and EP and make it an eight track release because the other things just feels wrong and almost insulting to the band to have such material released to the public. And the so-called official site holds both these for download on MP3s, so I ask myself what is the point? Why is this being released like this? Maybe as a cheap release with the first eight tracks would have sufficed for those curious about this band because that is what is good about this release, the first five tracks are actually quite enjoyable but as a whole this album is not worth wasting an hour on.

I’d say maybe if you are nostalgic or as a curiosity for the one interested in how the finnish death metal scene emerged, this might be your thing. Even if the EP was ahead of its time, now it is just too dated and the album as a whole is too incoherent to really make a good impression.

HHHHHHH