Brutal death metal, I was pretty sure, was something I moved past in my life. I just couldn't put up with it any longer. After years and years of enjoying the extreme, decadent sonic slaughter of melody and harmony from the genre, I came to the realization that it was a genre that was an outright rejection of taste, class and purity. Its morbid fascination with all things disgusting, revolting and perverse put me at odds with the genre that would sometimes bleed into my social life. But, goddammit, I loved this record.

COPROCEPHALIC is a project from American writer and guitar player Christiani Peluso and Taiwanese musicians Larry Wang and Hsuan Liu (vocals and drums respectively). I really can't deny it, this album was sick. The vocals sound like a belching whales esophagus, the drums are precise yet have such molecularly short beats it has the twisting force of a hurricane. "The Oath of Relinquishment" is just purely enjoyable for all the wrong reasons.

Without looking at the lyrics for these songs, I can pretty much tune in to what COPROCEPHALIC is writing about just from the ways the songs sound and the names of each track. You can pick up from songs like "Craving the Exotic Spores" and "Oxidize the Mind" that there was, let's just say, a fungal influence on the themes and subjects of some of these songs. There are also some very cybernetic vocal and sound effects thrown into songs like "Oracles of the Netherrealm". I think if the grinding palm-muted guitar chords and the merciless, mechanical double kick drumming, there is plenty of metallic methodology to allow the audience a good deal of science-fiction into the brutality of COPROCEPHALIC. These songs are hymns to the flesh as well as the cold steel of machinery.

Sure, all the songs are essentially the same style which make them almost impossible to differentiate from each other. There's no way I can write about how "Tentacles of the Abyss" is better or worse than "Desolation of Conjoined Embodiment" because both songs have snippets of parts that are so extreme and brutal randomly dispersed with a grinding, gravity-drum blasting projection of filth and nihilism. It's almost impossible for me to even explain why "The Oath of Relinquishment" is a good thing but just go with me; it totally is.

There are several guest vocalists on "The Oath of Relinquishment". Matti Way of PATHOLOGY, DISGORGE and ABOMINABLE PUTRIDITY comes in to belch in the only way Matti Way knows how on "Throne of Ooze". GUTTERAL SECRETE and SYPHILITIC vocalist Blue Jensen provides more disgusting gurgitations on the song "Retunding Our Humanity". And, not to be outdone, Angel Ochoa, who fries his voice for bands like CEREBRAL BORE, CONDEMNED, CEPHALOTRIPSY as well as DISGORGE, comes in on the album's opening track "Desolation of Conjoined Embodiment". And then the album's closer "(Proto)Christ" has an all out excremental orgy with Matti Way, Blue Jensen, Angel Ochoa and Larry Wang. It kind of reminded me of a WU TANG CLAN song with all of these different vocalists coming in. Obviously, this was far more brutal and grotesque.

I cannot hate this record even if I try. Just its pure brutality and power is enough to be astonished with. I recommend this album to fans of DEVOURMENT, BENEATH THE MASSACRE & CEPHALIC CARNAGE or in other words, fans that can't get their brutal fix met. Well gorge away, gore-hounds! "The Oath of Relinquishment" is here to melt your guts out.<