I can't imagine that such a claim requires explanation, but allow me to provide one anyway. Her entrance into the world was not without difficulty, and her sleep was troubled for the first several months of her life. So, by extension, was mine. I spent many nights wandering the main floor of the house with my girl in my arms because stillness became her cue to wake and cry. One such stillenacht I found _Night of the Living Dead_ as a free On-Demand choice and thought I'd at least enjoy my sleeplessness. I never got through the first ten minutes. Each time I was sure I could settle safely into that black-and-white bloodfest, my precious little bundle of buzzkill revved up the pre-screams and I was up again. Forget walking; the dead barely got a chance to crawl. So were the amassed terrors of the countryside squelched by the discontent of a girl who wouldn't even grow teeth of her own for months to come.

[Oh, you say you couldn't give a rodent's crusty sphincter about all that? You just wanted the skinny on the latest death grind madness? Fine.]

All zombie lore can be split with a rusty chainsaw into two camps: the humorous and the humorless. Thankfully the former is far more prevalent than the latter. In the case of Zombie Inc.'s _A Dreadful Decease_ and Terrorizer's _Hordes of Zombies_, the divide is much more even.

Zombie Inc. provide listeners with a sample-infested death romp that celebrates the most gruesome aspects of the undead legacy. The performances are uniformly excellent, from the reliable, almost rock-oriented drumming to the flesh-ripping riffs to the perfectly bestial vocal delivery. The lyrics aren't always clear, but those that peek out of the din ("sounds of ripping flesh", "evil killing spree", "we must eat!", "blood will flooowww") are suitably horrifying. In forty minutes, the band unleashes ten engaging songs about fear, death, and survival in a world overrun by ravenous corpses, and there's hardly more fun to be had on either side of the grave. If Zombie Inc. goes public, I want as many shares of stock as I can get. Before my daughter puts them out of business, that is.

Terrorizer, on the other hand, have employed the zombie motif for more socially conscious ends. After an intro that sounds like a pitched-down slo-growl PSA delivered via helicopter, the title track lays bare the grind killers' agenda: "Unless humanity learns from the mistakes of the past, we're doomed... there can be no end, only death and misery." (In case you miss it the first time, the line repeats near song's end.) And herein lies the primary fault of Terrorizer's first post-Pintado record. There's no levity in their choice of metaphor, and it drags the album into the pack of ordinary metal discontent. Terrorizer get the music right, though: lightning speed, anti-melodic progressions, gravelly vocal monotony. It sure ain't bad, but neither is it compelling after the first third has blazed by and you know you've still got eight songs to go.

Yes, zombies ooze commentary about modern consumerism and mob mentality. But zombies also ooze rotted organ tissue. They're clumsy. They're belligerent and non-verbal. They're incontinent. The moment zombies cease being comical is the moment they've got you in their jaws. Don't become zombie food. Laugh a little.