I really wish I hadn't bothered.

This record is as workmanlike and mundane as stumbling into the toilet for a morning shit. It's basically a death metal album, but with most of the fast, fun, interesting bits removed, leaving only slurries of boring as fuck breakdowns and really shitty sounding blastbeats.

And the vocals... god, the vocals.

Chaps and chapettes, we're in major pig squealing territory here. Every song consists of a garbled series of noises akin to a farmer repeatedly kicking one of our porcine brethren in the testicles. I know we aren't expecting vocal clarity, but death metal vocalists are usually diverse enough to make their guttural warbling dynamic and vicious. Take Corpsegrinder for instance. His delivery is clear and brutally fun. Lord Worm meanwhile was utterly indecipherable, but there was character and glorious malevolence in his inhuman roaring. The Waking the Cadaver douche just sounds like he can't be arsed. It's the kind of growling you do when you're taking the dogs for a walk, listening to your iPod, hoping no one will hear you.

The music fares no better. It's simple deathcore nonsense, and there are times when they sound like they can barely play. Every so often, the drums seem to go out of time, or the guitars will sound botched. Things aren't helped by an impotent production job that makes the record sound like it was recorded in a swamp (and not in a cool, New Orleans way either). It's a boring buzz of crap riffs, shitty drumming and belched vocals. It's genuinely painful to listen to at times, and you yearn for something a bit more pleasant and musical. Like getting your hand stuck in a mincer.

Everything Waking the Cadaver do has been done before (and better) by thousands of other bands. Look at the stupid song titles, like "Chased Through the Woods by a Rapist" or "Pigtails Are for Face-Fucking". Bands like Cannibal Corpse get away with the gore nonsense and silly titles because the music is generally pretty capable of evoking the utter chaos of getting your tits cut off by a nutter or something. Waking the Cadaver manage only to evoke the chaos of an old man nipping down to Spar for a loaf of bread.

Hopefully this record, in all its smothering awfulness, will sound the death knell for the heinous deathcore movement. It's gone on far too long, and more so than nu-metal, needs a shotgun in its face. _Perverse Recollections of a Necromangler_ (the title sounds like a Leslie Nielsen sex-horror-comedy or something) is a thorough document of everything that is bad about it, collected in one succinct, reprehensible package.

Chased through the woods by a rapist? More like having a wank with your grandma.