“Foetal Juice! Foetal Juice! Foetal Juice!”
OK, so some of you were born too late to get that warped reference to a certain excellent 1988 movie. The choice of name isn’t the only thing humorously warped about this UK death metal band, who make sure you know where they’re from in the spelling. Their outrageously vulgar song-naming traditions are even more over the top.
In fact, it’s likely that their putrid plays-on-words will be one of the first things that come to mind for anyone who’s encountered their previous releases. And make no mistake, they haven’t cleaned up their act on their new album Grotesque, whose title rigorously adheres to principles of truth in advertising.
But anyone who’s encountered their previous releases, and especially 2020’s Gluttony album, also know that Foetal Juice have a helluva lot more going on in their music than gruesome and raunchy humor. They could be reciting treatises on generally accepted accounting principles and the songs would still blast your head open like a cantaloupe on the receiving end of a shotgun.
And as you’re about to find out, there’ still more going on in Grotesque than we’ve already hinted at. Yes, it’s gross and traumatizing, and rabidly vicious, but it’s also galvanizing in the way of a big precision-made turbine.
We’ve got a few more thoughts of our own to share in advance of delivering the full stream of Grotesque down below, but let’s share some of the band’s thoughts first:
We wanted to create something that was incredibly violent both musically and lyrically, but we also wanted to capture the “Foetal Juice Groove” and black humor we have used throughout our careers. We really wanted to push our abilities as far as we could with this one by introducing speeds and techniques we haven’t used in the past. I think overall we have accomplished this and even added other elements such as the intro to the last song. It’s a route we have never taken before but it has turned out really well. We are very happy with the results.
About that last song (“Gruesome“): The clean intro was influenced by the film Lobster Man From Mars. Of course it was. And it will get heads nodding and toes tapping too, with a hint of surf rock and some very attractive bass work in the mix — but by this end-point in the album you know Foetal Juice aren’t going to leave it there, and they don’t, not without one final high-speed torrent of savagely drilling riffage, riotously pummeling drums, and noxious, teeth-gnashing vocals, coupled with maniacally writhing leads, and spine-jarring grooves.
“Gruesome” makes for a thoroughly exhilarating (i.e., deranged) way to end the album. But we’re getting way ahead of ourselves.
How about the first song on Grotesque? Its name is “Human Beach Master“. Lyrically, as the band explain, it’s “about those big fat bastards who take their tops off to fight, making them look like Beach Masters (Walrus’) fighting in a David Attenborough documentary – so, it’s pretty much a description of that happening. Two massive human Walrus’ fighting for the attention of a woman who couldn’t give a shit”.
You’re smiling now, but as an album opener, the song’s unbridled ferocity sets the tone for Grotesque. It’s a fine introduction to the band’s talent for discharging flurries of whining and whirring tremolo riffs that get the adrenaline flowing, malicious but dazzling drumwork, bowel-moving basslines, and bestial vocals that come for the throat and gag as if being strangled with barbed wire, all of it interspersed with doses of pile-driving groove.
And so in one way the album begins as it ends, and ends as it begins, at high speed and with ravenous intent, somehow both unhinged and technically impressive.
Well, but what about the other nine songs in between? To jump toward the middle you’ll be shocked to discover, shocked we tell you, that Foetal Juice vocalist Derek Carley smokes weed, and is dismayed that he can’t smoke as much as he used to be able to. As for the music, “Two Bongs Don’t Make a Right” is a minute-and-a-half death/grind mutilator. If possible, it’s even more furiously insane than the opening and closing tracks.
Truth be told, the hell-for-leather speed and flash-fired dexterity of those three songs is a marker of most of the album. Foetal Juice love to go fast, and obviously love doing things guaranteed to whip a mosh pit into a churning mass of crazed and filthy humanity.
But they do switch things up, administering brutish beatings and jackhammering chugs, infiltrating the music with bleak as well as berserk moods, giving you the d-beat as well as the blasts and the booms, and finding new ways in each track to set the hooks, of which there are a multitude. There’s even a dose of feral punk-rocking mayhem in “Cemetery Leachate“. Kind-hearted dudes that they are, they also don’t overshadow the bassist, whose nimble and nuanced patterns become the album’s unsung heroes.
About that reference to turbines: The main impact of the album is to shoot terrific amounts of voltage straight into your brainstorm, to pump hearts, to convulse muscles, and to suck the wind from your lungs. See for yourselves:
FOETAL JUICE is:
Ryan Whittaker – Guitars
Rob Harris – Drums
Derek Carley – Vocals
Lewis Bridges – Bass
Grotesque was produced, mixed, and mastered by Chris Fielding, and it features disconcerting cover art by Misanthropic Art. It will be released tomorrow — November 17th — by Gore House Productions, on CD, cassette tape, and digital formats, and it comes recommended for fans of Deicide, Vomitory, Napalm Death, Terrorizer, and Cannibal Corpse.
PRE-ORDER:
https://store.gorehouseproductions.com/
https://gorehouseproductions.bandcamp.com/album/grotesque
FOETAL JUICE:
https://www.facebook.com/FoetalJuice/
https://www.instagram.com/foetaljuice/