The Cleveland, Ohio death metal band, MUTUAL HOSTILITY, will soon be releasing their debut full-length album, "Inhuman Anguish," on Lethal Scissor Records. The album has seven songs bookended by two short instrumental tracks. The first track, "Exordium," serves as the de-facto intro to the following, "Reality Lens." There isn't much to "Exordium" and it would have worked better if it were merged into the second track. "Reality Lens" is one of the best tracks on the album. This is death metal without prefixes or suffixes, real meat and potatoes stuff. Adam Rogers uses two distinct vocal styles on this album, at times utilizing both simultaneously. The main vocal style consists of standard death metal growls that are surprisingly legible. The other style is a low, clean, almost chanted singing with lots of reverb. This style works well on the first few tracks but comes off as gimmicky when used on every track. The lyrics of "Reality Lens" are somewhat political, which is a welcome change from pontificating about different ways to die and be killed.

"Lie In Wait" has excellent drum work by Eric Frabotta. Overall, this track is simplistic. There are some headbang-worthy parts and two ultra-short lead guitar solos, but ultimately brings nothing new to the death metal table, outside of the dueling vocal styles. The eighth track, "Biorhythm" is another of the album's better songs. The vocals are fast and impactful and there's a proper lead guitar solo with some fine arpeggios. The way the alternate vocals are used reminds me slightly of SEPULTURA's "Biotech Is Godzilla," but the song lacks the charm of early SEPULTURA. There are still great chugging guitar parts and enough variation to hold my interest. The album ends with the aptly-titled "Denouement," a roughly two-minute instrumental that feels like an unfinished song. I would have liked to hear a more fleshed-out version with lyrics. The instrumentation is nice but still lags a bit in the middle.

Taken as a whole, "Inhuman Anguish" comes off as a lackluster debut effort. The dual vocals sound cool until they don't and the accompaniment fulfills the bare minimum death metal requirements. The cover art is well done and intriguing, but there's precious little else about this album to get excited about. That being said, there isn't anything egregiously wrong with it. They just aren't pushing any limits at all on this release.