Rating: 7.5

Country: Mexico

Release Date: 2007

Record Label: American Line

Track list:
18 Tracks
[mp3]
[mp3]

Band Website: Semen

Semen - An Intense Experience Molesting Corpses with Fetid Stench

Purulent - Turbulent Vaginal Secretions Implosion
Anal Smasher - Blasting Clitoris and Molestation
Tits Reper Expander - Noise Disembowelment Abruptum

“Welcome to my world, bitch.”

With a wonderful greeting like that, how could anyone not behave like one? Having members of Hol-A-Wit, this seems to be the second album by the Mexican pornogoregrinders Semen, their first one being Depositos De Semen. The modus operandi of the band is playing grind music with assloads of groove. When I say that, nine out of ten times it would imply that the band is merely a copy of early Gut or latter Cock and Ball Torture, but in Semen's case it is that one rare exception.

From the looks of it, early Dead Infection tunes are contorted to resemble a rustic Mexican and his face bombarded with cumshots of warm, smelly and sticky groove that remains that way to become an inseparable part of Semen's personality. Those who don't watch a lot of porn can simply think of Neuro Visceral Exhumation as a reference point. Their seminal groove, I would like to believe, originates from the right Czech testicle of Legalize for Cannibalism era Purulent Spermcanal and the left, larger German one of Sanity's Dawn's earlier works. The tugging tight elastic grooves of the latter snares the almost amorphous lo-fi groove of the former, and when that virile combination is tremulously ejaculated out of your speakers, you at the receiving end will be unable to swallow enough of it even with your mouth stretched wide like an underwear.

Semen have used almost every permutation and combination of goregroove on this album. From gorilla stomp-moshing replete with ape grunts in “More Fuck; More Fun” to a form of a slump-groove in the next song where the legs of our representative imaginary mosher are too weak to withstand the compulsiveness of the beat and as a result he keeps slumping to his knees while moving around in the gorepit puddle. If “Rotting Corpses In The Dark Rooms” is written keeping vintage Dead in mind, then the groovy beat in "Depositos De Semen" wouldn't be out of place on a Gonorrhea Pussy release. Also featuring stutter-grooves of Amputated as in the following song "Intoxication" and sweaty and sleazy ones of C.A.R.N.E. later on in the album, An Intense Experience… is decidedly a lo-fi goremosher's wet dream. But there exists a major drawback, that their mosh beats though varied in nature, are executed in an identically paced drunken stupor-like manner which gets all too familiar after a while. And with the album going on for nearly 40 minutes, it gets that much more difficult for your body to maintain the groove-dance momentum.

Then again as a relief An Intense Experience… isn't all about groove and only groove (that's boring). The groove parts are unfailingly alternated with blasting bursts, which, given their blurry nature and the accompanying stream of squealed and murmured vocals, are reminiscent of Reinfection's They Die For Nothing. Often the blasts are substituted for messy indulgent Mexican riffing and serve the purpose just as well. The production is utterly coagulated and in spite of all the intruments and varying vocals, the music falls out of your speakers as one solid entity. The low drone of the guitar dominates that sound and remains constant throughout. The intros, never embarrasing, only serve to enhance the album's bestial orgy-like vibe similar to that of Satyriasis and Nymphomania.

An Intense Experience… has all the ingredients of an enjoyable porno/goregrind album, with the peculiar Mexican sloppiness in their music making it that much more savoury for the low dwelling goremongers. It might not be an engaging album from start to finish, but fans of the genre definitely need to get a taste of this Semen, a band that has in it the potential to release an orgasmic one.

November 18th, 2007