You can tell that a band is smart when most everything is in Latin for some reason. Fordity, the Eastern Java-centered brutal death metal band, has released their first EP, "Ritus Panoptis." I'm being painfully sarcastic about the whole Latin thing, as I feel that it's quite a performative way to give off nuance. Then again, this is brutal death metal I'm talking about - how nuanced can it really be? These questions plague me as I dive into this five-song bundle of brutality.

Of course, there's a minute-long introduction that "sets an atmospheric setting for the album" or whatever I usually write. "Prima Causa (Intro)" is a static-sounding wet dream for a drum set. The drums are played at such mind-boggling speeds that the quality drops. The quality doesn't get much better with "Simpsium Realis." The Cookie Monster vocals are monotone and barely entertaining, and the insanely technical instrumentals, while impressive in theory, are plain boring to listen to. This track, and pretty much every other one on this album, is cut into a fairly small dosage of death metal. "Xenosentrisme" is up next, and it took me longer to pronounce the song title than it did to hear something musically different from the previous track. There is a slam segment as the song nears its end, but it's super short and goes nowhere. "Upeksha Manawa" is the longest song on the EP, at only 3:27. Three more minutes and twenty-seven more seconds of music I just listened to. "Prejudis Kultural" concisely wraps up this project.

To prevent this review from becoming a slander-fest, and since I'm a decent person, I can locate and examine a couple highlights that spiced up this experience. The guitar solo in "Upeksha Manawa," while short, was impressively technical in a way. It actually had a range of sound to it, instead of just riffing away at the same tone as everything else. Another thing to mention is the present bass. I heard the bass chugging away in every track, and I'm glad it wasn't produced out of the mix like most modern metal. I'm starting to grasp at straws here. Fordity's "Ritus Panoptis" did absolutely nothing for me as a listener, but I'm glad Fordity got some anger out while recording it.