Dead Review Collection #10 - SPAWN!

I have too many things to say about this album.  2004's The Wretched Spawn is my favorite Cannibal Corpse outing.  To my ears, it's the perfect distillation of every element that makes this band...this band.  Since I'm not stopping at three sentences (don't tempt me, Satan/Jesus), I'll have to whip out the bulleted list.  I'm sorry!  I tried to avoid this route, but if any record is suited for an itemized index, it's this badass daughterfucker.  A scanty digression, if I may; that's my daughter on the cover.  Mary Mary Sue Coccaro (I named her Mary twice because she was conceived on a merry-go-round on Christmas Eve) died during childbirth.  The winged gentleman behind her gurney?  That's me.  As you can see, I was racked with grief.

~ Production!  This one was doctored by a returning Neil Kernon.  I thought that Gore Obsessed sounded adequate, but Spawn fucking blows it out of the cemetery slush.  The guitars are full and massive.  Alex's rumblings are represented well in the bottom end, especially for the grinding riffs in "Cyanide Assassin" and "Nothing Left to Mutilate."  And "Slain."  And the others.

~ The songs!  Songwriting has never been a weakness for these chaps, but variety and the thorny matter of dynamics have been elevated.  The first seven tracks are astonishingly multifarious for death metal carols.  Heh, wouldn't it be funny if all Christmas carols were replaced with CC tunes?  Anyway, "astonishingly multifarious" may seem excessive, but dude, they aren't just seven tracks.  They are seven different approaches to composition.  No theme or concept is repeated.

~ The songs!  Specifically!  "Severed Head Stoning" is an ideal opener.  It's a barrelling blackjack to the cranium.  "Psychotic Precision" cranks up the speed and technicality, which are graded back down for the caveman grooves of "Decency Defied."  A studio video of "Frantic Disembowelment" went viral because fucking holy piss, it's fast.  "Festering in the Crypt" is an all-timer (remember, it's my review, not yours).  The melodies are sickly, and the languid tortoise pacing allows George to enunciate, to really dig into each syllable.  Speaking of which...

~ George!  Individually, the members of CC are operating at full tilt.  There isn't a weak link in the bunch.  But man, Spawn is the album that made me fall in heterosexual love with Corpsegrinder (and his neck).  His vocals are unreal.  The low growls are so brutal, I would believe you if you told me that George was part-chicken.  For the uninitiated, chickens swallow small rocks and gravel for digestive purposes.  That's a stupid way of expressing it, but the guy's voice sounds inhuman, okay?  And the high screams!  This is the last CC set where George uncorks loooong shrieks (he comes close to hitting 13 seconds on "They Deserve to Die").  They were giving him intense headaches, so he had to retire most of his upper range.

~ Smash the scrotum!  The lyrics to "Blunt Force Castration" are hilarious.  That's all.  I'm immature.

I guess that's it.  Spawn sits atop my personal pile of corpses.  By the way, "Skull Fragment Armor" is a bonus track on the digipak edition of Evisceration Plague.  If you're a trained fan (read: maniac), you'll be able to tell that it was recorded during the sessions for The Wretched Spawn.  Of course, it slams.