I don’t think there has been an instance in my reviewing career where I have taken on an album and have regretted doing so, and have struggled to even write a half decent sounding review without coming off as condescending or overly negative. But there’s a first for everything, and with that being said, I present to you, Devourment.
I normally don’t take on bands that have been around for almost two decades, let alone bands that I haven’t listened to thoroughly in the past; enough to at least know what’s in store for me as a reviewer. Since there didn’t seem to be a whole bunch of people fighting over the newest Devourment album, Conceived in Sewage, I took it upon myself to give it a few spins to see if I could possibly add a new band to my roster of extreme and heavy brutal death metal. I was mislead, and Devourment was not added to my list of radical brutal death metal bands. There’s a few reasons as to why they weren’t and we’ll start off with the fact that it is just so unbelievably repetitive that it actually annoyed me. I’m sure that the band made what they thought was great with their respective genre, but holy guacamole, this 30-minute album came off as sounding like one 30-minute song.
The best part about this album was the interlude track titled “March to Megiddo”, which has a really catchy and awesome instrumental drum march style to it. I thought that definitely brought a catchy factor to the album and if it had lead into the next track, it would’ve been even better, but it ended just as abruptly as it started and the next track was a complete 360 from what we had previously listened to for the last minute or so. I just feel like the four-piece Devourment were all over the place with this release and didn’t really have a general viewpoint on what exactly they wanted to create or where they wanted to go with it. The release in its entirety is so heavy it’s not even funny, but it’s heavy just for the sake of being heavy and it has little to no replay value and brings absolutely nothing new to the table.
If we’re speaking about brutal death metal, I have to say that Pathology’s The Time of Great Purification was easily one of the best in the past year because it brought the heavy like Devourment has with Conceived in Sewage, but instead of just focusing on the brutal aspect of it, they made it their own and added a little pinch of Pathology into the music that you could hear, and that’s what made the release so great in my mind; I played it over and over for about a week straight. Devourment, though, I honestly just want to get over with. Maybe I’m just not brutal enough to understand where the band is coming from, but this release is heaviness and nothing more. It’s empty gutterals and growls, empty riffs and drumming on top of an empty atmosphere.
I give them credit for making something so increasingly heavy and brutal, but thumbs down for lack of creativity and ability to make the release their own. I get the feeling like this album was just thrown together to appease the fans that have been waiting for a new release for a while. Better luck next time to the boys of Devourment, but this one was definitely a miss in my books. 
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