Rating: 7.8

Country: Belgium

Release Date: 2005

Record Label: Deepsend Records

Track list:
1. A First Grade Teacher's Pulpification
2. Hospital Hecatomb
3. Cum / Gut Expulsion [MP3]
4. Where Is The Rest of Me?
5. Mangled In The Mortuary
6. Brutally Bashed Baby Boom

Total playing time: 18:33

Band Website: Serial Butcher

Serial Butcher - Genocide Landscape

Steven - Vocals
Nico - Drums, lead guitars
Nicolas - Guitars

The name's Serial Butcher and their modus operandi is going from kitchen to kitchen butchering live chickens. Why chickens you ask me? I don't know, probably they were down with chickenpox and were badly made fun of? Besides, our metal world already has its pig destroyers and cattle decapitators. Plus chickens taste great. Okay so anyway, they are known to operate in kitchens located in Belgium and have been doing this for quite some time but it's only recently that their genocide against these plump and tender chickens was exposed when a desperate chicken managed to escape by flying out of the kitchen window and was spotted by Deepsend Records who quickly alerted the brutal death metal fans.

During the extensive investigation which followed after their arrest, a well maintained cd of Cannibal Corpse - ‘Butchered At Birth' was found with these butchers which made it obvious that they were largely influenced by them. Also discovered were train passes to Germany where they supposedly got topless and drank beer with brawny overweight bands like Jack Slater, Spawn, Maledictive Pigs sharing the same ideology, no not Nazism, but Cannibal Corpseism. As compared to their fellow disciples, they are known to display more aggression and brutality and at the same time they are quite modern in their approach. The fact that these guys have much more interesting personalities than your average Cannibal Corpse worshippers was proved after a nude search was conducted by the authorities and hidden close to their gross private parts were found airline tickets to Florida where they allegedly met up with Diabolic - they reached that conclusion after listening to the peculiar solos and some of their restrained thrashiness in songs like “A first grade teacher's puplification” and "Mangled In The Mortuary". I was overjoyed by the fact that these guys in spite of playing in this brutal death vein weren't ashamed to play such sweet leads. Even in other songs like “Cum/Gut Explosion” and “Where is the rest of me?” one could hear classy leads exposing links with Panzerchrist and Michael Amott from Arch Enemy respectively. I'd say that's the right fucking way to play death metal, no matter how brutal they might want to be.

The sound on ‘Genocide Landscape' is just enormous. I couldn't understand how such a huge mass of sound could possibly be filtered and transmitted through my ancient speakers. It's very thick and there is little room given for the instruments to breathe, almost as if all the three members were trying to rush out of my narrow speakers at the same time. The guitar tone is great and some of the effects which they use like say in “Hospital Hecatomb” are refreshing to hear. The vocalist sounds like Chris Barnes' dad which is a very good thing but as orthodox and as he might like to be, more variations in the vocal department delivery would be better. The drumming reminds me a bit of Brodequin but they should do something for those triggered double bass drums because all they do is try and make the album sound more sterile and pound whatever little life the leads try to give to this album.

I eagerly await their full length album and hope that they are successful in capturing our interest for a longer playing time. For that they should try and see to it that they offer us with something new and refreshing in their songs (like the earlier ones on this ep) and surely they must continue to play those nice leads. Serial Butcher very well have the potential to insult those American brutal death bands, and they don't necessarily have to be the stupid ones.

September 14th, 2005