Spawned From Hate - Elective Amputation
“Hey. Do a Death Metal.”
Written by Big Bear Buchko

As I sit here wearing my new “ghetto masterpiece” Ace Ventura t-shirt, my mind goes back to the classic scene in the movie where Jim Carrey joins Cannibal Corpse on stage for a much more over-the-top and comical rendition of “Hammer Smashed Face.” It was guttural gibberish. It was farce. It was taking a well-defined genre such as death metal and turning a mirror back on its own preposterousness. It was done with both ridicule and respect, as Jim Carrey himself was an early death/thrash metal fan, and is, in fact, the reason that Cannibal Corpse appears in the movie at all. He loved them.

So, what am I supposed to deduce from an album like Elective Amputation by the United Kingdom’s own Spawned From Hate? It is an album rife with the reflection from that mirror but without the respect or regard for the genre it represents. I am convinced that at no point did actual lyrics for these songs exist. This is not to say that death metal is expected to be coherent, of course not, but there is a considerable difference between a Cannibal Corpse “DAHRHAN PEEPLEDONTARIGHT AROUNKADARANDON” and a Spawned From Hate “erogh    erogherogh   erogh    ergerogherogh.” It seems every song plays out as if someone took a small group of musician’s that had never met each other before, brought them all into a studio and said, “Hey. Do a death metal.” And this album is what they did.

There’s nothing special here – there’s no soul. There’s nothing separating one track from another. There’s no framing, no presentation… it just… is. We begin with “Unchained Unbound,” a track that almost immediately hits the ear wrong due to each instruments’ channels being mixed way too closely and too perfectly together – a known drawback to a band’s reliance on digital home recording studios. It’s unpleasant, and makes you turn your head away from the speakers. The vocals, when they begin, sound strained. Amateurish. Like, they definitely had a couple “cough” takes. There was probably a large kettle of Green Tea on the drummer’s mom’s kitchen stove for the band’s “vocal days.” And the lyrics – the start of the erogh erogh erogh – come on slowly, one syllable at a time, and un-impress completely.

We then move on into “Butcher My Master” and “Intravenous Violation,” and it was around this time that I realized how challenging it was to review a record that doesn’t really give you anything to review. This is the kind of death metal that people make fun of – hollow and void, unintentionally silly at times. You can only hear the erogh erogh erogh so much before you giggle to yourself and have to ask: what the hell am I listening to?          Spawned From Hate. What are you spawned by the hatred of…? Is it music? It is enjoyable music that you hate? Do you have an overwhelming hatred for being prepared and practicing more? Is that why we have this record? Spawned From Hate is the early-evening opening band you’ll hear about that one time and then, likely, never again; lacking every single one of the precursors that brings an audience back for multiple playthroughs.

For “Intravenous Violation,” my only review note was the line “I refuse to believe they practiced these songs ahead of time.” For “Bane Consumption,” the three-point qualifier of “these aren’t words.” From then on, only two more tracks could I be bothered to jot notes down on: “PDU” (in which I wrote “this is so unpleasant”) and “Supreme Being” (“Is this frog metal? Why is someone croaking?”) Because it seriously sounds like someone is croaking like a frog on the next-to-last track on the album. Although, honestly, I would absolutely review an album of frog metal music… warts and all. (And it would still probably come out more favorably than this review has for Elective Amputation.)

The good news about reviewing an album so totally devoid of impact is that I’ll have no issue whatsoever in forgetting that I’d ever heard it. It’s filler. Fodder. Brain Damage B-side material for Traces of Death VI, although that would usually imply some form of brutality to the music. There’s not. There’s nothing. There’s nine complete tracks of who the hell cares. My only compliment goes to the record producers, who managed to perfectly capture this Diet Coke banality with unwavering precision; a band with all the intensity and gravitas of the fat little Dixie Chick.