After listening to this new eight song release, I'm ashamed that I was never able to really appreciate this band until now.  DRAWN AND QUARTERED are a band with an All-American Death Metal story.  Its history dates back 25 years ago to 1993 when the Seattle band was then known as PLAGUE BEARER.  The band have now with the addition of "The One Who Lurks," delivered seven full-length albums.  Theirs is a sound all their own, primitive yet polished, demented, VOIVOD-influenced, and brutal in a savage, predatory way.

When the album opened with "Nefarious Rites," I was stunned.  I cannot remember the last thing I heard that was so despondently creepy.  The vocals are the brutal factor, though.  This is sub-INCANTATION low!  The second track, "Ravage the Cadaver," has a level of sinister that is just inherently evil, surely born of it.  The guitars are low, not eight string low, but six string in eight string dropped tuning.  Just the sheer rubbing of the nickel across the guitar's frets is channeling the goat lord himself.  Simple, foreboding melodic ideas are hammered home by layering level upon level of guitar tracks until it's slow, like impossible-to-churn molasses.  The third track, "Horned Shadows Rise," completes the initial spell of the beginning three tracks.  Its own spell is hard to shake.  What is most unique is the melodic interplay of the guitar and bass.  It just increases the dark intensity.

At the seventh track is the title track.  Twisted, it is built upon a blackened über-slow Metal riff.  When the band starts blasting, the effects of the subhuman lows meet the technical precision of high velocity drumming.  The chords that simply hang, show crystal clear twin notes of identity.  The sound is rooted in gain as much as in the gain from the sound of the pick on the strings.

DRAWN AND QUARTERED are a band that has had the length of career upon which to construct their own unique, finely-crafted sound.  They have certainly succeeded, and I will now be looking to dive into their other material.  They certainly do have that VOIVOD influence, though, in the fact that they have their own alternative method to melody.  The Death Metal certainly doesn't drift into Psychedelic dimensions, but in terms of the construction of riffs and melodic ideas, they are a very forward-thinking band.  The crypt-like, megalithic delivery of the band's sound has as much to do with reverb as to chaining low, low tones via string instruments.  It's true the band have the previously mentioned influences, and it should also be mentioned that MORBID ANGEL have a pretty large stake in their sound as well.  DRAWN AND QUARTERED are a Death Metal band so brutal they are also a mighty Doom band without intention as a side effect.  That's brutal.