Vore, Gravehammer

There’s absolutely nothing I love more than quality, straightforward death metal played by a band that gives their all and everything when performing it. Arkansas’ Vore is just such a band and their latest full-length effort is chock full of mid-paced annihilation. The death metal thundering from Gravehammer is powerful, well-written and destructive.

These guys may not have thrown away the mold they used when first forming in 1994, but that’s got to stand for something. Spending that long honing your craft, staying true to your ideals and the type of music you love to play has to have some merit in today’s world. And one listen to Gravehammer will be enough to sway your mind just enough to give the album a second listen. And then a third. And then, before you know it, you too will be speaking the virtues of Vore’s appeal and steadfastness to bludgeoning, barbaric death metal.

The first two tracks to a wonderful job of introducing you to the album and setting you up nicely for the awesomeness that is “Doomwhore.” Following up on the bruising riffage of “The Unseen Hand,” the third track on the album will leave your cranium hanging limply from a now useless neck, having snapped every tendon in your upper vertebrae with relentless head banging in just the first minute alone — if you’ve made it safely to the halfway point you can kiss your neck (and ass) goodbye. The title track has some of the largest guitars on the album as the guys settle into a series of massive riffs and heavy drum work.

“The Claw is the Law” is another standout track that features what Vore do best — lay down some solid, pulverising death metal to an extreme effect. It’s also a song that captures some of the band’s heavier drum work and more technical riffs, yet still remains barbarically single minded in its execution. Needless to say, I love the fuck out of it. The remaining three tracks on the album (the beastly “Progeny of the Leviathans,” the rather up-tempo “Throne to the Wolves” and pummeling album closer “Sacerdotum Tyrannis”) are no less devastating and carry the band’s method operandi perfectly.

Nine songs, fifty three minutes and an unwavering dedication to their craft. That’s what Vore’s latest offering of death metal is all about. Not only is Gravehammer’s cover art beastly, but the material behind it even more so. Straightforward, head banging nastiness in all it’s unfettered glory.