Aborted – "Vault of Horrors"

You'll have to be more than just a hardened horror movie buff...

It's not exactly a secret that death metal and horror have gone hand in hand since... whenever someone introduced the first gory DM album cover. Probably Cannibal Corpse. And just like I have no idea about that, I don't know if this is the first time that a DM band creates a concept album based on horror movies. Would be an unlikely first, but, shit, I've never heard of anyone doing it until now.

The tracks on Aborted's 12th studio LP, then, are inspired by such awesome classics as "Evil Dead", "The Thing", "Hellraiser", "Halloween", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", and... erm, "Dogma". Yeah, gotta have an odd one out. I guess.

You're not hearing it a lot, though. Because, this being DM and all, the vocals are doing that wicked thing where they sound like an otherworldly demon rather than a human being. And this is despite the fact that every single cut (get it? Because horror movies?) features a guest vocalist from another band in the genre. Raspy or guttural or anything in between, those voices aren't exactly very intelligible. Plus there's the fact that Aborted vocalist Sven de Caulwé is notoriously one of DM's deepest, most bass-y growlers – which is only wonderful, might I add.

More than anything, though, this is really drummer Ken Bedene's album. Sure, there are faster bands out there in terms of pure BPM, but the speed of this man's fills, coupled with the virtually constant barrage of details and variations, is blinding. The guy's only 34, and he must play tens of thousands of single strokes on an album like this. I can't fucking contain it, you guys.

Indeed, what we're dealing with here is a record so infernal-sounding that it'll take more than a hard-core horror aficionado to digest it. Shit, even at a relatively short playing time of +40m, you're gonna be exhausted towards the end even if you're listening to grind-y DM on a daily basis.

This album is so impressively written and executed that you couldn't improve upon it in a whole lot of decisive ways. Shit, some more variation might even ruin things.

Apart from the eerie album intro and the almost clean minor bridge in closer "Malevolent Haze", there are a couple of elements around the middle that stand out. Upon possibly some of the record's fastest grind bits, "Death Cult" actually features a memorable vocal hook towards the end. "Insect Politics", interchanging a thrash beat with downright grindcore cacophony, is exactly the latter more than anything else, clocking in at only 1:44. And then there's that sparse harmonic minor tremolo intro in "Hellbound", but that one quickly drops into pure fucking mayhem as well.

Overall, indeed, you won't find a lot of stand-out moments here. And that's not the point, either. Some people have complained – and not without any good reason – that the production on "Vault of Horrors" is too compressed. Others, however, have countered that it only adds to the wonderful infernality of the whole thing. And in either case, there'd be no way you'd get through an album like this and not need to rest your ears for a bit.

I could wish for the guitars to stand out a bit more, though. But the riffs do sound gnarly as shit. And to be fair, my travel speaker is kinda crummy, so no reason to not give the band the benefit of the doubt on this one. And while there are some half-times and breakdowns sprinkled around, those aren't tiringly predictable like with bands such as Suicide Silence or Caliban; they're rather welcome, staccato-technical variations like with Decapitated.

So yes, while I do get tired towards the end of "Vault of Horrors", that doesn't mean I'm not utterly blown away by it. On the contrary, it's for that very reason that I get tired, and I probably wouldn't want it any other way. And while one might miss some more variation, there's no arguing that Aborted don't fuck around for anything, and that this album is so impressively written and executed that you couldn't improve upon it in a whole lot of decisive ways.

Shit, some more variation might even ruin things.

Rating: 5 out of 6

Genre: Death metal / death grind
Release date: 15/3/2024
Label: Nuclear Blast
Producer: Dave Otero