Based in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Festival Of Mutilation are a technical death metal band that will tickle the facny of fans of Death, Atheist and similar sounding artists. Goran Džidić’s vocals remind me, or maybe they are just intending to remind me of something like John Tardy from Obituary’s style and of course Death’s Chuck Schuldiner, but will less pronunciation, or rather a lesser clearer and forceful nature The guitar riffs are complex and imitate latter Death material, but the disappointment is the weak drum sound. The drums themselves are much faster than the expected tempo for some of the guitar fills, riffs and sounds. I like the melodic approach to such riffs as heard on ‘Il Princpe’, the variation works, but the sound is thin. You cannot expect much else though, this is not a big budget affair, but in these gents favour os their musical ability, the arrangements are on par with some big hitters, and it is the music we should concentrate upon anyway. ‘Dorment Still’ I am sure borrows a riff, a signature sound from Death’s ‘Sound of Perseverance’ album, this is prog/tech/death I suppose, it works, it could do with being more in your face though, but this is still a cool instrumental piece non the less.
Closer ‘Optical Nightmare’ continues with Jasenko Džipa’s guitar riffs, and the track finally manages to maintain a proper upbeat tempo once the vocals come in. Thus this finally gets you on the right track, I was worried this would be a pure technical release, but thankfully Festival Of Mutilation can write songs that have a groove, something that can get you motivated in a pit, right down to the harmonized guitar sound in the solo and finger pumping bass guitar rearing it’s funky head from time to time.
Bursting with clear musical talent and a fine art for delivering some excellent technical death metal that has clarity rather than pure aggression, Festival Of Mutilation have a voice, they have songs, they need you to take notice, this EP should do that.
