The Wretched Spawn (Wretched Spawn? - Cannibal Corpse)

Member Name: Frankingsteins

Product:	Wretched Spawn? - Cannibal Corpse
Date:	17/04/08 (41 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Back on top form.

Disadvantages: Top form never meant all that much.

'The Wretched Spawn' has been called the most technically proficient album Cannibal Corpse has released, leading to it occasionally being cited as a death metal masterpiece by people who have never heard anything else the genre has to offer. While it's clearly the band's best since Corpsegrinder came along in 'Vile' eight years earlier, it still shows all the signs of a band going through the motions and really offering nothing that hasn't been heard before.

Corpsegrinder puts in an impressive vocal performance here, leading the way in songs like the narrative 'Decency Defied' but also occasionally seeming overbearing, as is the case for much of the opener 'Severed Head Stoning.' As a consequence, the instruments are largely relegated to the background, especially the guitars which don't do anything interesting throughout the album apart from some daft-sounding harmonic pinching at the start of 'Psychotic Precision' that sounds like a weak attempt to compete with the likes of Machine Head or Pantera, mainstream bands that these guys really shouldn't be bowing down to.

Elsewhere, the band tries to pull off another slow song despite their previous failures on 'Gallery of Suicide,' but 'Festering in the Crypt' is more palatable, even if the guitars are extremely tedious when robbed of their one gimmick of being fast. If this is the only death metal album in your collection, it will really stand out. If you have at least one other, it really won't.

1. Severed Head Stoning
2. Psychotic Precision
3. Decency Defied
4. Frantic Disembowelment
5. The Wretched Spawn
6. Cyanide Assassin
7. Festering in the Crypt
8. Nothing Left to Mutilate
9. Blunt Force Castration
10. Rotted Body Landslide
11. Slain
12. Bent Backwards and Broken
13. They Deserve to Die

Summary: Cannibal Corpse's ninth album (2004).