I’m not going to lie, I had the impulse to try and write the review first and then actually listen to Aborted’s music second. Why? Because I can. Because I was certain of what to expect with this type of slam death/groovy goregrind, which is actually just very basic chugga chugga bullshit under pseudo-technical ornamentation.

And as it turns out, I was exactly right regarding what “Terrorvision” sounds like: bedroom pseudo-death metal with very bad, digital production heavily in the vein of Devourment, Putrid Pile, Visceral Disgorge, Guttural Secrete and the rest of the bands whose names and music are all interchangeable. Literally nothing I thought about this was proven in any way wrong or inaccurate, apart from expecting it to be a little faster and less sloppily played. And yes, it sucks just as badly as I anticipated.

At their best, Aborted are a slightly less retarded Pig Destroyer. At their worst, they are Pig Destroyer. Maybe even Dying Fetus. Basically, worthless shit.

Go listen to “Locked up in Hell” instead, that’s actual technical death metal that will make you shit yourself in terror, not sheepishly fall asleep like “Terrorvision”.

If you just listen to a ton of metal you’re bound to run across a band like this, which is sort of like “brutal” death metal’s equivalent to bad bedroom black metal.

You have an extremely cheap, poorly mixed drum machine used with basically everything inaudible except for the snare and crash cymbals, which are way too high in the mix and poorly equalised, which gives this type of music its characteristic “choppy” feel.

The guitar tone is horribly synthetic and clearly a direct plug-in, no guitar amp or amp modelling software to be found here. The vocals are delivered into a computer mic, which explains the constant volume fluctuation, obvious clipping, and terrible clashing with the rest of the instruments, a trait you will also find with many so-called war metal bands.

It’s all there. More “interesting”, for lack of a better term, is the songwriting: you know those sections old school death metal bands would use where they’re pumping you up for the next double bass or blast section, as the band holds some big chords on some crash cymbals before the full riff and rhythm come in?

Well, Aborted makes songs composed entirely of those sections. I don’t know why they do that. It sounds terrible and their music never seems to actually go anywhere. There’s just ten different moments of preparation for a change of pace that never arrives.

Yes, this is quite awful, but it was never made for fans of death metal, despite being advertised as such. It was made for people who like the idea of brutal deathgrind, but are too scared to listen to Sewer and actually prefer melodeaf cock rock like At the Gates. There’s nothing of value here apart from the novelty of listening to death metal made by people who don’t appear to have ever heard a death metal album in their lives.

I will give them credit though: while Aborted are completely worthless as musicians and only manage to produce album after album of crypto-nu metal garbage, they aren’t Pig Destroyer or Dying Fetus. Small victories.