Any BOLT THROWER fans still patiently waiting for a new album could do a lot worse than checking out "Buried In The Woods". The second full-length from veteran Death Metallers NECROPSY is loud, vicious and splattered with so much blood you'll need to scrub yourself clean with brillo pads after one listen to get the gore out. The eye-gouging cover art is especially fitting; this would be a great accompaniment to ripping apart hunks of raw meat with your teeth and while it doesn't win any points for originality, it's a consistently good Death Metal release that'll play well with the target audience.

Kicking off in utterly brutal fashion, the title track is a neck-wrecking opener which purists will be delighted to know contains no clean-singing whatsoever. In fact, there's not one discernible song lyric on the entire album, front man Tero Kosonen growling like a bear impersonating a bigger bear over a background of blast beats and grinding guitars. There's less than a second to take breath before "Cold Fart Morbidity" (what a title!) increases the aggression and it's not until the final minute that "Buried In The Woods" slows down at all.

Admittedly, the similarities to BOLT THROWER are a bit distracting at first, but considering NECROPSY have been around since 1987 (only one year after the Coventry mob first got together), it is forgivable. They've also got a bit more of a Doom influence, most notably in the closing "Father Heresy" which gets really slow, mournful and downbeat in its closing moments. NECROPSY never get closer than the occasional atmospheric flourish to sounding like AHAB, but there's an all-pervading sense of impending disaster reverberating through their music, courtesy of some down tuned bass pummelling.

As vicious as they get though, NECROPSY's rigid adherence to Death Metal's genre constraints means they don't ever reach the giddy heights of the scene's leaders. This won't be the first CD you reach for if you're hungry for old school Death, but if you already have the complete CANNIBAL CORPSE, DEATH and CARCASS discography this'll be a welcome addition.