Album Review: Spawned From Hate – Elective Amputation
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
After a couple of shorter-form releases over the years, Brummie brutalists, Spawned from Hate, have finally landed their debut album in the form of Elective Amputation. If you’re familiar with the band’s output to date, 2015’s Accelerated Butchery and Withered & Decayed from 2018, you’ll be all too aware of their dedication to the uncompromising and devastating; only, this time around, they have the polish and the production to do justice to their apocalyptic world view.
Not that there’s any fear of Spawned from Hate having softened their approach on this new platter. The sheer brutality is evident from the opening bars of Unchained, Unbound, as guitarist Ewan Gibb tortures his instrument, drawing squeals and chugs from the wretched thing. Sometimes they sweep and others they follow a blast-and-pause section, which goes someway to add further colour to the track.
Ewan’s guitar find itself in the spotlight throughout Elective Amputation’s nine tunes: adopting a more technical feel for Butcher My Master, and oozing filth throughout Intravenous Violation and some probing licks across Oppressor.
I hope the other lads in the band will forgive me for this, but the real star of the show is Italian percussionist, Giulio Galati, sometime live drummer of Blasphemer and Kampfar, among others, whose superhuman work on the kit is even more impressive when it’s considered the drum-parts were originally intended for a drum-machine.
The blasts of Buther My Master and the album’s title-track are impressive enough, but Giulio’s consistently high BPM throughout the run-time, and his contribution to the nostalgic trip of the Scott Burns’ Morrisound-alike Bane Consumption brought memories of the late Eighties and early Nineties come flooding back. His rhythmic partnership with bass man, David Husdon supports everything Spawned by Hate achieve here.
While Elective Amputation is, for me, a sterling work of the most brutal of death metals, two of its tracks stand out above the others. P.D.U. is the longest song on offer and finds all the component pieces of the band in perfect harmony. Blasting drums and colourful guitars create a journey through the psyche, and vocalist Dan Phipps’ ripping words surpass all he had done to this point. Secondly, there’s Supreme Being, which fleshes out the flourishes and adds Secreted and Grave Dolls’ squealer, Luke Talbot’s talents.
Clocking in a scootch under half-an-hour, this debut from Spawned from Hate is a blast in more ways than one. Created with a passion and executed with consummate skill, Elected Amputation is a brutal death-head’s dream.
