Band:	Fulci
Album:	Duck Face Killings
Style:	Brutal death metal
Release date:	August 2024
A review by:	RaduP

01. Vile Butchery
02. A Blade In The Dark
03. Fucked With A Broken Bottle
04. Morbid Lust
05. Maniac Unleashed
06. Knife
07. Slashereality
08. Human Scalp Collection
09. Duck Face Killings
10. Rotten Apple
11. Sadistic Murder
12. Lo Squartatore
13. Stabbed, Gutted And Loved
14. Il Miele Del Diavolo

Death metal, of the brutal branch or not, has always had a fascination for the horror flick. It's not surprising that some bands get more specific than that. What is surprising is finding a rap section in one of the songs.

Gore is pretty much the name of the game for most of death metal. The subject matters of Cannibal Corpse, the horror movie samples of Mortician, the entire related subgenre of goregrind, it's all steeped in horror movie imagery and aesthetics. And though horror movie afficionados might be able to make a more distinct and specific connection between various horror movies and various death metal releases, it isn't that common to see death metal about a specific horror movie. Well, here's Italy's Fulci, who seemed to have been so enraptured by the works of their countryman Lucio Fulci that they named their entire band after him. Lucio isn't entirely well known outside of horror circles, so if the name doesn't ring any bell, don't worry, I also haven't yet watched any of his movies, embarrassing as it is to review this album without having any familiarity with the source material.

However, I have watched a couple of "giallo" films, and it's somewhat ironic that Duck Face Killings isn't even the first giallo inspired metal album I reviewed this year, though within death metal it certainly is. Fulci have been doing it for longer, an entire decade at this point, and so far each of their albums has been a tribute to one of Lucio's films. The cover art and the sample (and the Bandcamp press release) make it pretty clear that this time around the movie being referenced is 1981's The New York Ripper. Interesting excerpts from Wikipedia include: "The script was re-written by Dardano Sacchetti at the last moment before filming had begun", "The film was banned in the United Kingdom, where it could not be sold until 2002", and "The New York Ripper holds a 25% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on eight reviews". Do whatever you want with that information.

What I'm more concerned with is the music. And the core of the music is basically brutal death metal. But also it's not technical brutal death metal, so a lot of the brutality comes not from that kind of overwhelming intensity, but rather from that combination of gutturals and heavy riffing that's kinda of the border of OSDM. Cannibal Corpse, themselves a very important band in the development of brutal death metal, come to mind, and Fulci is kinda the same thing but placed a bit more firmly over the border from death metal to brutal death metal. The gutturals, for how low and gurgly they are, are still surprisingly intelligible, occasionally reminding me of Dethklok's Brendon Small.

But if this was just a death metal album with solely its death metal elements intact I don't think I'd give the album as much thought. Not to say that they don't have the knack for making the death metal side of things sound interesting (especially considering that it makes up the bulk of the record), but a lot of the appeal comes from the things that do set it apart. Even just conceptually having it tied to something with a cult credibility like the giallo genre gives it an aura of coolness, but that does get represented within the album itself by a few interlude moments comprising samples from the film as well as horror synth soundscapes (and during the closer track having a dark jazz saxophone), integrated in a way that doesn't deter too much from the flow of the album. However the one deviation from death metal that was most mind boggling is having horrorcore guest rapper Lord Goat on "Knife", a move that kinda comes out of the blue and feels more like a daydream, but that I find respectable for its boldness.

In the end, Duck Face Killings is... fine. The death metal side is perfectly capable, even if I don't find it overtly exciting, and its admittedly cool aura from the giallo ties feel like things that I enjoy more in theory than in practice.