Band:	Splattered Mermaids
Album:	Stench Of Flesh
Style:	Brutal death metal, Grindcore
Release date:	March 2008
A review by:	Baz Anderson

01. Face Laceration
02. Stench Of Flesh
03. Throat Unsafe From A Pair Of Scissors
04. Instant Spastic Regurgitation
05. Spliced Girls
06. Circular Holes In The Cranial Structure
07. Corporeal Manifestation [feat. Martin Pedersen]
08. By My Blade [2008 version]
09. Degrading Malice [feat. Martin Pedersen]
10. Restless Dreams Of Atrocities

A mermaid, a mythical and wondrous creature, and all of a sudden you realise one is lying in front of you on the floor. You see, the problem with this mermaid is that it is dead. It is more than dead, it has its brain flopped over the floor, it's arms are bent and broken, there may be a few extra orifice's that weren't there originally, and its flipper appears to have had an unfortunate meeting with a cheese grater, or something similar. You come to realise you are holding a hammer covered in blood with some golden hair tangled around it too. You wonder how this could have happened, but then as you notice the sinister stare of your CD player callously displaying "10 Tracks" sitting in the corner of your room, it all becomes painfully clear what had happened. It turns out "Stench Of Flesh" is what happened, you had put on the debut album of Swedish nut-jobs Splattered Mermaids and let the music take you to your happy place.

Indeed, "Stench Of Flesh" is one of those "don't blink else you'll miss it" albums, but in this case if you blink you'll have some splattered eyelids to match your pet mermaid. The album is just under twenty-four minutes of groovy, grindcore-ish brutal death metal, an orgy, or perhaps an orgasm of blastbeats and insane vocals.

The album has some really groovy guitar riffs to keep things from becoming stale, but the meat of "Stench Of Flesh" is comprised of blastbeat after blastbeat and typical guttural vocals with the added aid of a guest appearance from Visceral Bleeding's Martin Pedersen.

The world of ultra brutal music isn't exactly a diverse one and Splattered Mermaids haven't done anything to change this, but what they have done is put forward a completely solid and confident album of sheer brutality that can only lead to greater things in the future.

"Stench Of Flesh" is that kind of album you would be listening to whilst some kind of autonomous or hypnotic mutilation of various fish-life would be taking place, quite some niche. The album provides a consistent psychopath soundtrack and an overall enjoyable twenty-odd minutes of carnage. Just make sure you keep all sharp and heavy objects out of reach while you put this one on. Hide the goldfish too, just to be safe.