Avulsed steps in with a new lineup and sees the band combining its forces with Victor Dws and Alejandro Lobo on guitars, Alex Nihil on bass guitar, and Santi GoG on drums. The new album has a balanced characterization of old-school gore and brutal death metal, think Cannibal Corpse versus Putrevore.

Avulsed‘s revamped sound is driven by rhythm guitars, gut-wrenching bass and the low guttural growls of Dave Rotten. Those vocals are so recognizable, with the riffs bringing you a nightmarish palette of melodies impressively offered in the track “Lacerate to Dominate”. At first listen the album seems to maneuver in the mid-tempo style and is strengthened by pummeling drum beats, however, the raw riffing and melodies remain at the forefront of the music and setting up a classic death metal vibe.

There are plenty of grooves and serpentine guitar solos slashing through the galvanizing drums, while the album takes a different direction from the early Avulsed albums, each song is ridden with a dark atmosphere.

Tracks like “Blood Monolith” and “Unrooted” wield their rotten sound and present the carnivorous zombified growls of Dave Rotten; the hallmark of “Phoenix Cryptobiosis” sets a desolate, apocalyptic and sinister vibe.

The guitars are raw, and the drums are furious, the mid-tempo sections sometimes offer slower riffs and grooves exhilarating in the context of the music; the drums are choppy and sound undeniably grotesque and this somehow reflects the roaring fires of the blasting graveyards as depicted in the album’s cover.

“Guts of the Gore Gods” is one of the highlights of the album, this track delivers heavy riff mania for death metal maniacs. It starts with the blistering pace of the drums kicking into high gear, the low-pitch growls create a niche by fusing some of the faster riffs in the album. Sometimes the rumbling riffs are laced with melodies and thrash metal riffs result in a dense sound, the riffs are murky with melodies wrapped like tentacles around the songs.

The album’s title track “Phoenix Cryptobiosis” maintains the mid-tempo trademark the previous albums lacked, but the drums focus less on blast beats. There is a lot of riffing leaning toward grooves that reminds me of early Six Feet Under albums like “Haunted” and “Warpath”, and this is to say that the drums add fuel to the tempo, and blasting sections aren’t very dominant.

The rotten guitar tone continuously swirls like a vortex, the theme of the album is overtly inspired by horror films, with tracks like “Devotion of Putrefaction” and “Neverborn Monstrosity” whirling vortexes of uncompromising tight and brutal riffing then offering contagious melodies. Low-end growls emphasize the qualities of Dave Rotten and riffs topped over the raw pummeling drums, the new album proves the songwriting capability of the veterans and the compositional mix that seems to explode in the latter track.

The slow tempos push the songwriting to expand beyond the prior work of Avulsed, the subtle rhythm is very effective, and the drums show its ability to boast enough brutality. The vocalization range is very similar to Chris Barnes (ex-Cannibal Corpse, Six Feet Under), however, the guttural growls dominate and this makes the atmosphere of the album brutal and layered with the catchy melodic sections. The guitar has a chunky sound that resembles the chainsaw riffs of Dismember, Dave Rotten treads into complete and different territory than the modern revivalist death metal bands.

Avulsed packs up several brutal tracks and precisely the last three tracks in the album “Dismembered”, “Bio-Cadaver” and “Wandering Putrid Souls” showcasing the intricate guitar patterns without borrowing from modern technical death metal. Dave Rotten rewards the listener with some of the catchiest and most haunting zombified melodies and excellent song arrangements, and I bet fans will nod their heads to the brutal riffing and choppy drum beats.

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