Review by Nathan on November 7, 2020.

Humour in metal is a tricky proposition for me, and usually any attempts to shoehorn it into a gore-soaked brutal death metal aesthetic come across as slightly off putting at best and uncomfortable-in-a-not-good-way at the worst. For whatever reason, though, Goratory has always had a certain endearing charm that allows me to overcome the off putting misogyny and toilet humor, mixing the dark and the ridiculous in a way that allows me to detach it from reality enough to find it entertaining. For my money, they're the only band that could get away with opening an album with a track titled 'George Clinton and the 9 Year Old Gutter Slut'.

Part of the reason the band can get away with such blatantly disgusting subject matter is because the musicianship has always been surprisingly adept, with tons sudden bass licks, manic and superb drumming and unflinching commitment to oddly detailed storytelling, even with absurd, inane lyrical topics. Given the pedigree of some of the bands associated with Goratory at one time or another (Deeds of Flesh, Arsis, Job for a Cowboy, Abnormality, The Black Dahlia Murder, Despised Icon), it starts to make a little bit more sense. I guess back in the day, in order to be a successful extreme metal musician in the New England area, first you were required to do a stint in Goratory and write songs about farting/anally injecting Death Sperm /finishing it off with a Cleveland steamer.

There was a long period of dormancy, seemingly because most of the key cogs in the machine went on to bigger bands that had slightly more accessible lyrical content - with the notable exception of Sexcrement, which Adam Mason used to go even further down the deranged and perverted rabbit hole. It appeared as though Goratory was a legend of the past, but now they've returned after over a decade with heaps more professionalism and polish. That's a risky proposition, because there's a chance that the music loses the ridiculous, over-the-top charm it had before - it's even harder to retain that edginess in 2020 when everyone already out-grossed each other a decade prior, and the novelty of toilet humor brutal death metal has evaporated.

Sure enough, this does have a different flavor than those who are more familiar with Orgasm Induced Diarrhea may expect - the lyrics are decipherable if you follow along, the guitars use a lot more leads and modern dissonant chords to supplement the blast'n'groove base, and the production has a lot more of a crisp punch that really lets the filthy bass licks stand out. The riffs have an insane amount of detail, rarely repeating but the songs still sound organized amidst the chaos. Every song telling a grotesque, misanthropic story with a sardonic humor lining the underbelly that makes it even creepier. There's an added dollop of seriousness - these dudes are no longer teenagers, and some of their previous subject matter would have been too juvenile even for their standards - but they still throw in a few of their signature 'what the fuck' moments, with a song about making a bunch of hippies shit themselves uncontrollably and killing them by lighting the resulting farts on fire, and another track being one of the most hilariously vicious
roasts of Seth Putnam I've heard.

I didn’t think it would have been possible for a band like Goratory to reform - their charm and appeal was a rare combination of elements that wouldn't have the same novelty now, and I certainly would have thought that added more maturity to their sound would have made them boring. Yet here we are, and I find myself coming back to Sour Grapes more frequently than I ever did their earlier albums. Darren Cesca is no slouch, and he actually played on their 2004 album as well, so it's not like this is a slapped-on session performance - this guy is a core member. He uses a lot of clever cymbal work to make the riffs jump at you more, and has enough dynamics and restraint so you can listen to the album all the way through without getting overwhelmed. Cesca's always been a very skilled drummer, but this may be the most... musical he's sounded that I can think of. The same goes for Adam Mason, who uses a nice variety of squeals, shrieks, and high rasps to complement his fast, sloppy-but-somehow-still-tight growls, and it makes the entertainment factor of the vocals go beyond reading the lyrics in isolation.

Basically, when you get right down to it, Goratory are still perverts with huge balls, they’re just... professional perverts now. Like a dude in a suit with a briefcase and his 20 pound nutsack dragging behind him as he briskly hustles to work.

Sour Grapes is still entertaining, but there’s more attention paid to the little things, and it makes for one of the most technical and entertaining albums I've heard this year.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Review by Nathan on November 7, 2020.

Humour in metal is a tricky proposition for me, and usually any attempts to shoehorn it into a gore-soaked brutal death metal aesthetic come across as slightly off putting at best and uncomfortable-in-a-not-good-way at the worst. For whatever reason, though, Goratory has always had a certain endearing charm that allows me to overcome the off putting misogyny and toilet humor, mixing the dark and the ridiculous in a way that allows me to detach it from reality enough to find it entertaining. For my money, they're the only band that could get away with opening an album with a track titled 'George Clinton and the 9 Year Old Gutter Slut'.

Part of the reason the band can get away with such blatantly disgusting subject matter is because the musicianship has always been surprisingly adept, with tons sudden bass licks, manic and superb drumming and unflinching commitment to oddly detailed storytelling, even with absurd, inane lyrical topics. Given the pedigree of some of the bands associated with Goratory at one time or another (Deeds of Flesh, Arsis, Job for a Cowboy, Abnormality, The Black Dahlia Murder, Despised Icon), it starts to make a little bit more sense. I guess back in the day, in order to be a successful extreme metal musician in the New England area, first you were required to do a stint in Goratory and write songs about farting/anally injecting Death Sperm /finishing it off with a Cleveland steamer.

There was a long period of dormancy, seemingly because most of the key cogs in the machine went on to bigger bands that had slightly more accessible lyrical content - with the notable exception of Sexcrement, which Adam Mason used to go even further down the deranged and perverted rabbit hole. It appeared as though Goratory was a legend of the past, but now they've returned after over a decade with heaps more professionalism and polish. That's a risky proposition, because there's a chance that the music loses the ridiculous, over-the-top charm it had before - it's even harder to retain that edginess in 2020 when everyone already out-grossed each other a decade prior, and the novelty of toilet humor brutal death metal has evaporated.

Sure enough, this does have a different flavor than those who are more familiar with Orgasm Induced Diarrhea may expect - the lyrics are decipherable if you follow along, the guitars use a lot more leads and modern dissonant chords to supplement the blast'n'groove base, and the production has a lot more of a crisp punch that really lets the filthy bass licks stand out. The riffs have an insane amount of detail, rarely repeating but the songs still sound organized amidst the chaos. Every song telling a grotesque, misanthropic story with a sardonic humor lining the underbelly that makes it even creepier. There's an added dollop of seriousness - these dudes are no longer teenagers, and some of their previous subject matter would have been too juvenile even for their standards - but they still throw in a few of their signature 'what the fuck' moments, with a song about making a bunch of hippies shit themselves uncontrollably and killing them by lighting the resulting farts on fire, and another track being one of the most hilariously vicious
roasts of Seth Putnam I've heard.

I didn’t think it would have been possible for a band like Goratory to reform - their charm and appeal was a rare combination of elements that wouldn't have the same novelty now, and I certainly would have thought that added more maturity to their sound would have made them boring. Yet here we are, and I find myself coming back to Sour Grapes more frequently than I ever did their earlier albums. Darren Cesca is no slouch, and he actually played on their 2004 album as well, so it's not like this is a slapped-on session performance - this guy is a core member. He uses a lot of clever cymbal work to make the riffs jump at you more, and has enough dynamics and restraint so you can listen to the album all the way through without getting overwhelmed. Cesca's always been a very skilled drummer, but this may be the most... musical he's sounded that I can think of. The same goes for Adam Mason, who uses a nice variety of squeals, shrieks, and high rasps to complement his fast, sloppy-but-somehow-still-tight growls, and it makes the entertainment factor of the vocals go beyond reading the lyrics in isolation.

Basically, when you get right down to it, Goratory are still perverts with huge balls, they’re just... professional perverts now. Like a dude in a suit with a briefcase and his 20 pound nutsack dragging behind him as he briskly hustles to work.

Sour Grapes is still entertaining, but there’s more attention paid to the little things, and it makes for one of the most technical and entertaining albums I've heard this year.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Review by Vladimir on July 25, 2023.

It’s been a while since I last checked some thrash metal, so I’ll be covering a band from Puerto Rico called Transgresión and their second full-length album ...En Un Lugar Harto De Odio..., released on December 20th 2022 via Inriri Discos. 

When it comes to Transgresion’s overall musical output on this album, the majority of it is your expected thrash metal riffing with heavy down-picking guitars, hardcore punk drumming or occasional mid-tempo drumming and hilariously aggressive shouting vocals with lyrics in Puerto Rican, while also providing other bits like guitar melodies and guitar solos. The only thing that deviates this from your standard thrash metal is that the style leans more towards hardcore punk, something that’s very reminiscent of bands like Iron Reagan, Ratos De Porão, DRI, SOD, later Exploited etc. The songs themselves, albeit heavy and full of rage, for some reason don’t seem all that attention worthy and I personally didn’t find them all that memorable or spectacular at any given moment. The riffs do try their best to make the song as heavy as possible, but the general problem that I have with this album is that it’s for the most part all too similar, basically just one song template that’s applied from one track to another, including the riffs, the arrangements and the guitar solos. The solos in particular are really random at best, mostly utilizing some sort of improvisations or tremolo soloing, both of which really aren’t all that captivating or attention-worthy and it seems like they were just placed for the sake of it. It doesn’t help that much when you have a very long 11-minute instrumental, that being the sixth track 'Luciérnagas De Fuego', which has constant guitar soloing from start to finish, even after a short clean guitar interlude which tricked me into believing that it will take a break. I don’t know about you, but in my opinion the solos should really serve as a payoff that will really make you go crazy once you get to that part of the song, while here they are just all over the place and random at best, not really something I would consider worthy for a material that would make you lose your mind. The cover art for the album is quite unusual but unique in a way, which looks like some ink drawing on a piece of wood, though I personally didn’t find the artwork all too fitting for the music and it’s probably a bit too avant-garde for thrash metal. Production-wise, it sounds quite solid overall, the good part is that there was a respectable treatment to the heavy guitar tone and drums, while the vocals on the other hand might sound a bit off and not properly polished in the mixing and mastering process. 

Honestly, when it comes Transgresion’s second album ...En Un Lugar Harto De Odio..., I was really hoping that I would enjoy this one, but sadly I didn’t. The album is just a colossal disappointment and I really struggled to sit through its total runtime of 56 minutes, even trying desperately to find something that would really deserve some praise or mention. I haven’t checked out this band’s past works and I am not sure I will, but I personally suggest that you skip this one and look for something better. 

Rating: 4.9 out of 10

Review by Vladimir on July 25, 2023.

It’s been a while since I last checked some thrash metal, so I’ll be covering a band from Puerto Rico called Transgresión and their second full-length album ...En Un Lugar Harto De Odio..., released on December 20th 2022 via Inriri Discos. 

When it comes to Transgresion’s overall musical output on this album, the majority of it is your expected thrash metal riffing with heavy down-picking guitars, hardcore punk drumming or occasional mid-tempo drumming and hilariously aggressive shouting vocals with lyrics in Puerto Rican, while also providing other bits like guitar melodies and guitar solos. The only thing that deviates this from your standard thrash metal is that the style leans more towards hardcore punk, something that’s very reminiscent of bands like Iron Reagan, Ratos De Porão, DRI, SOD, later Exploited etc. The songs themselves, albeit heavy and full of rage, for some reason don’t seem all that attention worthy and I personally didn’t find them all that memorable or spectacular at any given moment. The riffs do try their best to make the song as heavy as possible, but the general problem that I have with this album is that it’s for the most part all too similar, basically just one song template that’s applied from one track to another, including the riffs, the arrangements and the guitar solos. The solos in particular are really random at best, mostly utilizing some sort of improvisations or tremolo soloing, both of which really aren’t all that captivating or attention-worthy and it seems like they were just placed for the sake of it. It doesn’t help that much when you have a very long 11-minute instrumental, that being the sixth track 'Luciérnagas De Fuego', which has constant guitar soloing from start to finish, even after a short clean guitar interlude which tricked me into believing that it will take a break. I don’t know about you, but in my opinion the solos should really serve as a payoff that will really make you go crazy once you get to that part of the song, while here they are just all over the place and random at best, not really something I would consider worthy for a material that would make you lose your mind. The cover art for the album is quite unusual but unique in a way, which looks like some ink drawing on a piece of wood, though I personally didn’t find the artwork all too fitting for the music and it’s probably a bit too avant-garde for thrash metal. Production-wise, it sounds quite solid overall, the good part is that there was a respectable treatment to the heavy guitar tone and drums, while the vocals on the other hand might sound a bit off and not properly polished in the mixing and mastering process. 

Honestly, when it comes Transgresion’s second album ...En Un Lugar Harto De Odio..., I was really hoping that I would enjoy this one, but sadly I didn’t. The album is just a colossal disappointment and I really struggled to sit through its total runtime of 56 minutes, even trying desperately to find something that would really deserve some praise or mention. I haven’t checked out this band’s past works and I am not sure I will, but I personally suggest that you skip this one and look for something better. 

Rating: 4.9 out of 10