Gorguts: Considered Dead (1991)
It’s ‘Silver and Gold’ week here on VinylSpinning, though I have no good reason for this undertaking other than a fast-accumulating pile of reissues pressed on these ‘precious’ colors and it’s time to bring them ‘out of the vault,’ so to speak ...
As I wrote in this old survey of the ‘Top Ten Canadian Metal Bands’ for Loudwire, Gorguts’ moniker did a disservice to one of Montréal’s most imaginative and respected heavy metal institutions; in Spinal Tap parlance, it seriously “understates the hugeness of the object.”
Vocalist/guitarist Luc Lemay originally founded Gorguts in the Rock Forest–Saint-Élie–Deauville arrondissement of Sherbrooke, in southern Quebec, before relocating to Montréal with second guitarist Sylvain Marcoux, bassist Eric Giguere, and drummer Stéphane Provencher.
The quartet’s first cassette demos date from 1989 and eventually drew the attention of Roadrunner Records, which set them on the death metal equivalent to the Yellow Brick Road down to Tampa, Florida’s Morrisound Studios to record ‘91’s Considered Dead with (who else?) producer Scott Burns.
And, though I hesitate to call music of such speed, precision, and sheer power ‘generic’ (too much skill and hard work are required to compose and perform it), even a dedicated fan like myself must admit that Gorguts’ sound was anything but groundbreaking, at this stage.
This would change drastically later on, but, for now, familiarity abounds: “... And Then Comes Lividity” (also the name of Gorguts’ third demo) is your classic, classical guitar intro, and modest efforts like the title track and “Drifting Remains” hew too closely to contemporary death metal standards.
Why, even the cryptic (like, literally ‘crypt’-ic) cover art was painted by death metal artist-in-residence Dan Seagrave -- see also Carnage, Dismember, Entombed, Hypocrisy, Morbid Angel, Pestilence, Suffocation, the list goes on and on.
But don’t sleep on more successful creations like “Stiff and Cold,” “Disincarnated,” and “Waste of Morality,” which exemplify Gorguts’ competent alternating of double kick-drum sprints with doomy grinds, punctuated by memorable dissonant melodies and comparatively melodious solos.
Speaking of solos, journeyman James Murphy (Death, Cancer, Obituary, Testament, Disincarnate, etc.) contributes one to “Inoculated Life” and, in a reflection of the death metal scene’s camaraderie, Cannibal Corpse frontman Chris Barnes lends a grunt and growl to the word-inventing “Rottenatomy” and a couple more tracks.
After the album’s release, to mostly positive but rarely effusive reviews, Gorguts joined Cannibal Corpse and Atheist on the Blood, Guts, and Gore tour, and then got to work on their sophomore album, The Erosion of Sanity, which raised the band’s creative and technical bar to new heights.
Unfortunately, the album still didn’t sell well enough to extend the band’s deal with Roadrunner, but a persistent LeMay would revive Gorguts with a new line-up five years later, and shock the extreme metal world with the technical death metal watershed, Obscura.
After that album, no would underestimate Gorguts based on their childishly grotesque moniker, ever again.
p.s. -- A few of these words (but no more than one or two) originated in my All-Music Guide review of Considered Dead.
More ‘90s Death Metal: Amorphis’ The Karelian Isthmus, At the Gates’ The Red in the Sky is Ours, Atheist’s Piece of Time, Autopsy's Severed Survival, Brutality's Screams of Anguish,Cannibal Corpse’s Tomb of the Mutilated, Carcass’ Heartwork, Carnage’s Dark Recollections, Comecon’s Converging Conspiracies, Cynic’s Focus, Dark Millennium’s Ashore the Celestial Burden, Dark Tranquillity’s The Gallery, Death’s Human, Deceased’s Fearless Undead Machines, Dismember’s Like an Everflowing Stream, Edge of Sanity’s Unorthodox, Entombed’s Clandestine, God Macabre’s The Winterlong, Grave's Into the Grave, Immolation’s Dawn of Possession, In Flames’ The Jester Race, Malevolent Creation’s Retribution, Massacra's Final Holocaust, Massacre’s From Beyond, Merciless’ The Treasures Within, Morbid Angel’s Altars of Madness, Morgoth’s Resurrection Absurd, Necrophobic’s The Nocturnal Silence, Nocturnus’ The Key, Obituary’s The End Complete, Pestilence’s Consuming Impulse, Sarcófago’s The Laws of Scourge, Sepultura’s Beneath the Remains, Suffocation’s Effigy of the Forgotten, Tiamat’s The Astral Sleep, Unleashed’s Where No Life Dwells.
