Rating: 6.1

Country: Mexico

Release Date: 2006

Record Label: Deus Mortuus Productions

Track list:
1. Entre Los Muertos
2. Trioxina 2 45
3. Pedro Alonso Lopez
4. Nacrosatanicos
5. Las Poquianchis
6. Los Vendedores De La Muerte
7. Conform (Siege cover)
8. Fuck
9. Necrosurgery
10. Mente Turbulenta
11. Adiccion Macabra
12. Francisco Cardeno No Seas Descarado (Machetazo cover)
13. Old Thrash


Band Website: Oxidised Razor

Oxidised Razor- Los Vendedores de la Muerte

Aaron OxRx - guitars, bass, , Beers, xxx, Gore
Jhony OxRx - Pig Voice Alcohol and ulcerated intestines
Luis OxRx - Kid kit Drum and Beer without alcohol

Alongside Disgorge, Parracoccidiodomocosisproctitisarcomucosis and Rottenness, Oxidised Razor is among the most excessive, innard-swamped Goregrind acts in Latin America. However, I have found their back catalogue to be a bit patchy, or blotchy. I loved their messy, gloriously horrid debut album Las Realidad Sangrientes, which saw the group regorge and rehash half-digested bits of their favourite Goregrind hits, moppin' up the ensuing pool with a heavily soiled production-cloth. Of course, the whole lot was wrapped up in some ghastly autopsy pics from out o' the family album, the band supplementing their slipshod Goregrind assault with shockin' snaps of colourful, slitherin' evisceration, messy deaths and slipperyly palatable entrails. A sudden leap in sound quality made their second effort, ...Carne…Sangre..., sound far too buffed-up and gleaming, which, to my coagulated cochleas, undermined the whole point of their splattery ‘n' gruesome, decay-caked Goregrind. This disc gave way to a split with their Porno/Goregrind brethren, Carne, which saw several steps back in terms of sound quality, given that their side consisted of decomposed demos and putrid live recordings. And so to their latest pile of congealed offal (I've managed to miss out on their other splits), which is probably their most rounded effort so far; insistent riffs, skilful drummin', charred ‘n' cracklin' bass-sizzle, swilled with lurid, vomitative vokills.

The knuckle-draggin' simplicity of the majority of these tunes assist the grindin' tightness of their performance, although the vokills hamper the catchiness a bit, cause they're really just anomalous, gassy retches covered in gaudily applied audio effects; pitchshift ‘n' flange/phase, which cause it to slub into a sloshy, slopped-over vokill track. Some of the more alienesque effects are similar to the sound that can be achieved by means of the Fruity Loops flanger ‘Vexed 5ths' preset. However, the riffs also seem to wander occasionally, caroming into mindless barre-chord throttle and reckless grindin' improv, so I s'pose the vokills lend themselves well to the clumsy ‘n' inebriated Goregrind shambles, yappin' and gaggin' along throughout whilst the band plunk, thrash and clatter away with splattery abandon. Like ...Carne…Sangre..., mid-paced tempos drive much of the material, but do be careful; lots of abrupt ‘n' rapid blastin' will force its way out of the mechanical common-time crunchery to ambush you. Said drumwork is deft, replete with breakneck-blast and adept fills, and manages to keep some sort of cogent rhythm going even when the band fancy goin' on a noisy ramble. The compositional skills of Oxidised Razor result only a handful of different tones ‘n' textures; vivid, gruesome vokill vermin coilin' themselves around monochromatic, low-brow grooves, many of which eventually stir themselves into a blurry, haphazard haze of riff-clog in an attempt to keep up with high-speed clattering going on beside them.

As with the rest of their output, the band carry out brazen plagiarism of vintage sickness by Carcass, Repulsion, Dead Infection and Regurgitate, as well as some dusty ‘n' forgotten ol' Porno by Dead and Gut. They also pilfer bits of classick Goregrind splits, like the Squash Bowels/Malignant Tumour release, with some Mince influence on a few tracks, displayin' a fondness for Agathocles and later Malignant Tumour. Openly lifting oft-filched bits of archetypal putridity from celebrated acts like those then lobbin' them all together in such a way that they resemble a ganglin' limb-jumble seethin' with disease, the band uses its necrotising, amputated appendages to claw at your skull, infiltratin' your noggin with groovy infectivity. This method of songwriting reminds me of such unashamed Gore-copyists as Holocausto Canibal, Autophagia, Fleshgrinder and Patologicum.

Whilst this album isn't polished up with the quite same gleam of the plush morgue-studio in which …Carne…Sangre… was produced, the recording is of a much higher standard than the clip-riddled, fizz-filled nastiness of the debut. Granted, the mix-levels allow coherence of each track throughout, but it seems a collection o' tired mics was roughly inserted into the battered desk afore being flung in the general direction of the amps ‘n' kit prior to recording them. Quite a bit of low-end punch and top-end definition seems to have been wrung out of the squashed guitar track, causing it to sound murky and muffled, the bass has been replaced with piped-in, pipin' hot ‘n' sandy sub-rumble sizzlin', while the snare-sound has been squeezed til it resembles a biscuit tin full o' Nestle's Blue Riband chocolate wafers. In fact, the track that has been afforded the most attention is the vokill; given the extravagant amount of effects and processin' that has been ladled over it. Of course, Goregrind recordings of this nature usually display this sort of (often deliberate) mishandlin' of studio equipment, and this often enhances the overall repugnance of their rotten musical expressions. This is true of most of this album too, but once the band relapse into drunken, plodular performance the music soon becomes a bit of a task to listen to because of its average sound quality.

The art creation and direction continues in the same graphic, Gore-clotted manner as their previous back catalogue; swathes of photographs depicting post-mortal procedures and operatin' theatre shenanigans, along with both fresh deaths and extreme states of cadaveric decomposition. They like to focus squarely upon appetizing intestinal close-ups, a lot like Lymphatic Phlegm, Feculent Goretomb or Neurovisceral Exhumation, but any self-respectin' Goregrind fan will have seen this kind of artwork countless times before! It's a nice digipak, also containin' a disturbin' serial killer portrait with coverscans of true crime/murder mags in each corner, as well as a fun collage of live pics. However, the design of the thing itself is hopeless! With just a small flap to hold them in place, the disc ‘n' booklet slide out onto the floor with every use.

This is grotesque, slobberin' music with plenty to please easily pleased Goregrind fans, but overall, this is no more than orthodox Gore.

June 30th, 2007