Sore "Gruesome Pillowbook Tales"

Tracklist: 01. Unfasten The Pillowbook 02. Remain Dead (In A Necrostatic Society) 03. Feast Of Antimatter Zombies 04. Monochrome Nothingness 05. Boneyard (Impetigo Cover) 06. Embryonic Limbs Combined With Ancient Ghouls 07. Crags To The Infinite 08. Unearthly Coffin Nail Experience 09. Slaughtered Amish People 10. Tales Of Signs Born By Blood, Black Fire And Death 11. The Excorcist (Depression Cover) 12. End Credits Release: 2007 Genre: Death Metal URL: www.sore.here.de Label: www.suffer-prod.de.vu

I've been pretty curious about their first album since I've seen Sore as one of the opening acts at the 2006 NRW Deathfest. The waiting came to an end now, because the disc is rotating in my cd-player. "Gruesome Pillowbook Tales" is the name for the debut album of this band, which combines members of Depression as well as members from Kadaverficker and Bereaved and has just been released through Suffer Productions. Assembled with overall 10 tracks, a nice intro and outro and also one video clip this album comes together with a nice red layout and a cool cover artwork from Tilo Jost. After looking on track titles such as "Remain Dead" or "Slaughtered Amish People" one could start thinking that this here is just another typical Brutal Death Metal band that wants to shock with some extreme gore lyrics. Everyone who thinks in such a way and is therefore making a wide berth around this album will definitely bite oneself in the ass later when this full length is nevertheless rotating for some time in one's own cd-player. Because Sore are hitting completely different ways. Sure "fast and gory Death Metal" can be found here, but this is not only for fans of brutal blasting music. Also those metal heads that are mostly swearing about all the new school Death Metal releases and are listening to bands like Death, Obituary etc. over and over will come at their expense with "Gruesome Pillowbook Tales" as the sound of this album is heavily shifted with old school Death Metal elements. On one way blasting one has at the same time the feeling, that there is some kind of old school mid-tempo laying over everything else. I'm not really able to describe this here any better; who wants to know what I mean has starting from here a good reason to listen to the debut album from Sore. Talking about the sound production there is nothing to criticize. The "Gory growls of terror" from Goreminister sounds just as clearly and enormously from the boxes as the sound of the "four-string hammer" from Marc and also Swobo's "six-string cadaver" as well as the "corpse battery" from drummer Andi are doing their job pretty efficient. Everything has been shuffled very tidy and none of the instruments is pushing itself too much into the foreground. Beneath 8 own tracks coming out of the brain turns of the band members one gets also two cover versions of Goregrind cult band Impetigo and German Death/Grind band Depression on the ears, which doesn't have to hide themselves in any way. Even completely in the opposite. Indeed the classic track "Boneyard" has been covered to death a little bit already, but rarely as good as it is the case here. In Addition to these two cover tracks "Gruesome Pillowbook Tales" is also offering us something for the eye in form of a video clip. Selected has been my personal favorite track of this album called "Crags Of The Infinite", in which we are allowed to visit the home of Goreminister and also getting a little insight in one of the hobbies of this freak with a Hannibal Lector mask. The whole thing has been produced by a group called Nordwald Productions. Over all it's not an extraordinary video clip, but it's still around lengths better than these "band is playing their instruments while standing before a black background" falling asleep assistances. All in all they did mostly everything pretty well with "Gruesome Pillowbook Tales". Only the runtime of 29 minutes could be improved a little the next time. It has not become a high flyer of an album, but it's still very solid and there is enough free space upwards existing for this band. If one is able to take pleasure in some Brutal Death Metal as well as old school Death Metal, one will get a succeeded mix of both genres and everybody else should be advised to risk an ear on this full length. I've never thought that old School Death Metal would be able to please me so much. But owing to Sore this has exactly happened.

Rating: 77 % | from ScYthe | Date: 23.09.07 | Time: 22:15	shut down