Written by Kep
Laceration – I Erode
> Death/thrash metal
> California, US
> Releasing July 26
> 20 Buck Spin
We don’t talk enough these days about shit being rousing. Records that have that magic combination of sky-high energy level, fast tempo, and riffs that absolutely fucking rip, the sort that get your blood pumping and make you want to run through a goddamn wall for the entire runtime. I love a good putrid death metal album that drags me bodily through the muck, sure, but something rousing? A bunch of kickass riffs that get me all riled up? That’s the kind of thing I throw on when constantly, when I want to get hyped up or need a boost or just want to have a damn good time. And friends, this new Laceration album is fucking ROUSING.
I Erode is a potent 32 minutes of high octane Bay Area thrashing death with precious little downtime or rest. Once you’re through the forgettable 64 seconds of ambient intro track, the only real chance to catch your breath is interlude “Dreams of the Formless”, a short, moody little number (that I personally would’ve placed one track later, to center it more directly in the middle of the runtime). Beyond that it’s a hurricane of whirling barbed-wire riffs and razor-sharp solos, relentlessly whipped into a frenzy. You’re unlikely to come out on the other side unscathed, but you’re gonna enjoy every damn second.
An exercise in bombastic destruction, the foundation of I Erode’s adrenaline-soaked sound is tone choices and production that make sure the band sounds as vicious as possible. Matt Harvey of Exhumed was the man behind the board during recording and it fucking shows: Luke Cazares and Donnie Small’s guitars have that gnarly snaggletoothed edge that rips through flesh like tissue paper, while the rhythm section of bassist Eli Small and drummer Aerin Johnson thumps and rattles mercilessly with impacts you feel in your bones. It’s all mixed and mastered impeccably by Autopsy’s Greg Wilkinson, so I Erode turns out to be a showcase of all that’s great in extreme metal out of the Bay. This record shines because it would feel as much at home in the 90s as it does here in 2024, both in its old school-honoring production and in the riffs themselves.
You’d be hard pressed to find a track here that doesn’t feature the sort of gate-crashing riff that we love Cannibal Corpse for. Opener “Excised” smashes forward with inhumanely pounding snare and cascading guitars before landing in a jagged triplet pattern that feels fresh and familiar at the same time. “Carcerality” is brutish in its syncopated bludgeoning that flows into classic thrash rhythms and biting tremolo. The highlight for me is “Vile Incarnate”, an aggressively violent powerhouse track that kicks off with angular thrashing guitars while Johnson tries his damndest to pop a hole in his snare. There’s a wicked solo from Small that ranges from serpentine to outright shred, and a staggering back half transition (at 3:15) from the opening riff into one of the song’s heavy grooves that might be my favorite riff transition of the year.
It’s just stacks upon stacks of lacerating (see what I did there) licks and roughneck riffs, top to bottom, with strong songwriting to join those stacks into one enormous construct. Sometimes the song is focused to extraordinary tightness, like the two-minute “Impaling Sorrow” and its two halves: one of relentlessly jagged guitar lines and one of groove-heavy chugging. In longer tracks they do an excellent job of introducing new ideas partway through that relate clearly to earlier moments, shifting into higher gears as they go. Take “Sadistic Enthrallment” (which opens with a choice Hellraiser II audio sample) as an example: its main riff is a semi-melodic idea with lots of neighbor tones, while the follow up keeps that semi-melodic feel in the same general range of pitches, essentially like a variation of the initial motif. Later there’s a dual harmony riff that feels like yet another extension of that process, which leads into a fretboard-scaling solo and then drops back into the opening set of ideas to drive to the finish. Cohesive songwriting like this isn’t as common as you’d think, and it’s clear Laceration are flexing their writing chops as much as their technique.
THE BOTTOM LINE
But let’s stop being so hung up on little details, huh? This album is a goddamn death/thrash nailbomb, ready to spray splintering shards in all directions. There’s no question: this is the rousingest of shit. If you like high energy, quality riff-driven old school shit with top notch production and in your face vocals—Cazares does a damn good job channeling the same sort of vocal energy that Chris Monroy of Skeletal Remains brings—then I Erode is likely to be one of your favorites this year. When that destructive six-minute closing title track ends I’m always ready to hit play all over again, and you probably will be too.