Once again I’ve been living under a rock, and haven’t followed the happenings in the Death Metal world. I had sensed that CUT UP was a new band formed of some seasoned musicians, though who and from where I did not know. I had some strange idea that the band hailed from England, though as soon as I pressed play, I found a lot of the things I heard quite familiar, and not that British. Especially the vocals sounded very familiar, together with how the rhythm section is build up and executed, so I had to seek info about the band. And wonder why I thought it all sounded familiar. I wasn’t that happy when VOMITORY called it quits a couple of years ago, though have enjoyed the farewell show on DVD a good amount of times since it was filmed, but new music would still had been great, and well… We almost have that now. The reason why the vocals sounded so familiar and the rhythm section as well is my old heroes Erik Rundqvist on vocals and bass and Tobias Tobben Gustafsson on drums, together with guitarists Anders Bertilsson, perhaps most known from COLDWORKER, and Anders Björte Björnsson, who also does some gutted grim growls, best know from the noise he makes in FETUS STENCH. The music on here can’t help to sound a little bit like VOMITORY here and there, due to the power of the rhythm section and the deep grunts from Rundqvist, though CUT UP is a bit more bound on speed and pure brutality, a brutal Death Metal record with a good deal of fast paced sections, though not without the heavy midsections of midpaced madness and darkness. The guitar work is impressive and quite varied, brutal and to the point, yet technically and adventurous, just take a track like ‘Burial Time’ where it changes theme a good deal of times, and then goes back to the beginning, together with the pace and rhythm, well made. We get it all, and it can’t get more Swedish Death Metal than this. Buzzsaw riffing with the classic Boss HM II sound and fuzz, technical offsets, sheer power and intensity, dark brutality, growls from further down than the bottoms of most fjords, efficient, violent and varied rhyhtms, a clean yet raw and gritty production powering the music and letting is hear all the instruments, good old Swedish Death Metal taken to the next level. Quite a good and wellwritten and -performed album. Much more than a forty seconds bloodbath, walk through the nervegas clouds, for the corpsegrinder experience, you might become redeemed in flames, or be next up for chainsaw surgery, the carnage rages on, shrouded in darkness, follow the eternal trail of corpses for more info: www.facebook.com/cutupofficial, www.metalblade.com