Aborted Fetus
Pyramids of Damnation

When I take on this album that looks quite interesting with a pyramid cover and that comes with interesting press text that is well written I have to wonder. And it is not to wonder about the theme that goes to Egypt and take on pestilences, executions, bloodsucking insects and more fun stuff, and it isn’t even about one of the most stupidly long playing times I have ever experienced. No it is; who thought that Aborted Fetus was a good name? It has to be down to stupidity and language skills; enter death metallers from Russia and there is a decent chance that those (or at least one part of those) are fulfilled. Because Aborted Fetus isn’t really a brutal or terrifying name, is it? It isn’t offensive either, more akin to antibiotics to combat infection or getting rid of a parasite. Their name is similar to Penicillin or Ketoconazole – not very cool.

Their music isn’t more adventurous than the name either, it is pretty much your standard traditional death metal album, so you could augment the similar bands with hundreds or thousands more if you want to. They are quite brutal, with strong gurgly vocals that are good for the genre and strong production they seem to have something going for them. Then comes the issue with the playing time, and that is difficult to overlook, one hour is long, but it doesn’t stop there, they keep this album going for one hour and twenty-eight minutes – why? A sensible playing time for a traditional death metal album is between thirty and forty minutes, it doesn’t matter how good your songs are and how well you brutalise your music, not even bands that I like in this genre sells more than fifty minutes as even the best death metal, or any other metal that doesn’t transgress genre boxes for that matter, turns boring when the playing time gets too long. Too much is never good.

So, the playing time is a big negative here, it makes this album feel boring an irrelevant. A better way to tell this story would have been splitting it in two releases, they would have sold about 44 minutes per release with this style as they have things going for them. But now towards the end I can’t help thinking that it would have been better to be the aborted foetus than having to endure another minute of this, so it is fortunate that I don’t have to listen to everything. I usually turn this album off before the end so I have to listen to the last few songs on their own rather than as a part of the whole. Too bad that they didn’t kill darlings instead of foetuses.

In the end I am only left with the question about the name, and why they used the American spelling of foetus. I thought Russians, like the rest of the world, didn’t like Americans. A name like that makes it difficult to take a band seriously and that is a bit of a shame considering that these guys aren’t really too bad, they just need to make more sensible choices is certain areas. Still, I think that the eternal playing time exaggerates the generic feel of this death metal album – it is pretty boring. And if you are wondering about the obsession with names and details, it is all that remains when the music does nothing for you, then it is art, names and other details that can give you a lifeline to hold on to when writing.

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