"Remember Me" is the third full-length release from German old school death metal band DISGUSTING PERVERSION. This is the type of OSDM that's worn close to the blood-covered sleeve: elements of DEATH, GRAVE and, in particular, BOLT THROWER linger throughout the fifty minutes of relentless assault and battery. What makes these five musicians different from their historical contemporaries, however, is the emotional resonance that permeates the song-writing.  Not many death metal bands would name an album "Remember Me," an almost emotional plea for understanding and the human desire for legacy.  DISGUSTING PERVERSION is certainly ready to  rip your head from its sternocleidomastoid muscle, chew on it like it was a piece of beef jerky, and then wash it down with your own blood; however, they also want you to know that even disgusting, perverted spawns of Satan need some compassion as well.

Musically, the band has all the elements of classic death metal.  The drums are deliberately trashy, an acoustic authenticity to them that makes it sound like they are bouncing off the walls of a dark, dank basement practice room. The guitars of Tobias Ruf and Simon Hörmann  complement each other effortlessly, alternating between simple, heavy mid-tempo grooves, unstoppable tremolos over bombastic blast beats, and soaring, screeching solos.  Bass player Andreas Gabriel lays down a concrete foundation for the rest of the band to build on, and Tobias Ruf's death growls are the screams, grunts and bellows of yesteryear. There is nothing flashy here.  This isn't a criticism: Old School Death Metal relies on an allegiance to a narrow set of parameters, and DISGUSTING PERVERSION honor this legacy admirably.

The first half of the album is pretty straight-forward.  The songs alternate between slow, doom-like heavy grooves and the inevitable descent into blast beat insanity. However, after the fifth song, a sonic plea to emotional release called  "Erase the Pain", the band switches gears drastically.  "Memories" is an instrumental interlude, a simple, clean melody on the rhythm guitar with an almost elementary-like lead played on top.  The simplicity of the piece is stark: it is a shriek of human desperation, the sound of finally hitting rock bottom, and finding it filled with the rotting, bloated corpses of those who were never able to escape.  The next song "Enforce All Hope" starts off similarly. Clean guitars, over an almost jazzy three/four chord progression lead to four bars of dual guitar harmony, two hits on a crash, and then- BAM- the band erupts into a clinic of controlled chaos.  If the first half of the album deals with that journey to the bottom, "Enforce All Hope" is the sound of fingers digging into the fleshy sides of that human well as we try to find our way back to whatever glimmer of light is shining through the destruction.

But let's not fool ourselves.  This is fucking death metal, after all, and death metal understands that our lives are devoid of hope.  The next songs "Shellshock" and "Downfall" are about the inevitable slip.  It's that first sip of vodka after six years of sobriety; the blood backing up in the syringe as you take one last hit; the taste of human flesh after you swore the last finger you ate would be the last appendage ever to find it's way down your gullet. "Shellshock" even includes desperate entreaties for mercy, spoken words buried under  putrid layers of guitar, bass and drums.  The album ends on "From the Cradle to the Grave", which may be the album's purest and best version of old school death metal.  Like BOLT THROWER's classic "World Eater," the song lays back on a slow, deep, violent groove, before leaping off the pile of bodies at the bottom of the pit into death metal hell.

"Remember Me" chronicles this descent into hell and asks for forgiveness- or at least a little understanding- as we witness the fall. Cohesively, the band does a good job of evoking these feelings; however, at fifty minutes plus the album is probably two or three songs too long.  It's a story that demands understanding, and with more brevity, DISGUSTING PERVERSION could have delivered this a little more powerfully.  The power of emotions, be these explicit in the words, or implicit in the music, is something many death metal bands would shun.  DISGUSTING PERVERSION has created an album that celebrates this, even if- in the end- those emotions will become buried under the inevitable deluge of bodies that have fallen to rock bottom.