US Death / Thrash / Grinders ENGORGED strike back with their third full-length after “Death Metal Attack 2” in 1999 and the widely praised “Engorged” album in 2002. Again the 9 songs offered here are filled to the brim with references to the good ol’ 80s Thrash and Metalcore in the vein of ANTHRAX, S.O.D., EVIL DEAD, NUCLEAR ASSAULT and work together nicely with the Death Metal / Grindcore brutality, which is of course still present as well. This mixture spews forth a good load of rousing riffs and violent paces and culminates in a highly diverse and entertaining release. So far, so good… but increasing this already high number of different musical elements with an equally high number of vocal styles makes the whole thing a bit hectic – a good example being the second song: it starts off very 80s like with a great Metal riff, very traditional clean vocals, as the song progresses some Death Metal growls in various intonations, then also CARCASS – like screams come into play and everything appears to be a bit too much. To some extent this is exactly what’s so entertaining about ENGORGED, because they surprise the listener several times but sometimes I feel any kind of structure within the songs slip away, one really needs some time to get used to it… Overall that’s the only point of criticism I have, the raw yet distinct production and the unstoppable drive of ENGORGED’s new material can be hardly resisted especially if you do love the 80s bands I mentioned above as well as old school Grindcore / Death Metal, the different vocal-styles could have been reduced to maybe two or so (like GHOUL do) but I might be a bit fussy about this. Visit www.razorbackrecords.com to check out a new song off the album!