Fulci : Duck Face Killings
Death Metal sets itself apart from other subgenres of metal through blood-soaked aggression. While this shade of blood red can at times create a sonic uniformity, 2024 has found bands like Gatecreeper and 200 Stab Wounds carving out great albums with focused songwriting that sinks its hooks in with repeat listens. This sets the bar high for Italy’s Fulci, who are five albums into their career. Their obsession with horror movies remains the driving force of their lyrics, yet what Fulci gets right in this regard is adding the proper ambiance to capture a mood that conveys the theme of the Italian director to which the bulk of their songs pay homage.
Fulci paint a clearer picture of who they are as a band on the thrashing attack of “Morbid Lust,” which finds the vocals taking on more form and function. A large percentage of death metal bands employ a typical guttural growl in an almost obligatory manner, so the more thought given to their application gives a band the upper hand when it comes to performance and makes them stand out from the pack. (Though, at times, vocalist Fiore Stravino’s low growl might remind you of Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget.) “Morbid Lust” is a more deliberate display of songwriting than the hammering that precedes it on “Fucked With a Broken Bottle,” which does not attempt to hide the Cannibal Corpse influence. The main difference in Fulci’s sound is the melodic guitar lines layered about.
The album’s most random moment comes courtesy of the rapped vocals that appear on the song “Knife,” courtesy of Non Phixion’s Lord Goat, but that’s exactly what happens. The riff to “Slasherality” steamrolls with a more deliberate churning, though it builds momentum until they are at your typical death metal hyper-aggressive tempo. When locking into Slayer-like grooves, the band prove themselves as capable riff writers, and prolifically so, as they toss around a backstock of them piled up in their practice space on “Human Scalp Collection.”
They take you back to the mid-’80s when death metal branched off from thrash on “Rotten Apple,” with a riff that grooves in a head-bangable manner. It evolves into a riff with a breakdown that tips the balance, sending it into the killer side of the fence. “Sadistic Murder” is a dense riff machine that chugs with magnetic motion, its aggression fitting as it pays homage to cinematic maniacs. The title “Stabbed, Gutted and Loved” comes across as a variation of the Cannibal Corpse song “Stripped, Raped and Strangled,” but, once again, when it comes to the music the band’s thrash influence continues to be the key selling point that makes them stand apart. “Il miele del diavalolo” closes out the album as more of an outro with a sequence of ambience, but their use of saxophone elevates it, and if they had worked this into their proper death metal songs, it would have been more of a game changer.
A Fulci demonstrates, the more melodic the better—anyone can do brutal for the sake of being brutal. While Duck Face Killings does follow the shadow of their influences down a dark alley, they emerge with their own blood-soaked take on things. Any fan of horror-themed death metal that tips the scales more toward the physical than the cerebral will find plenty to bang their heads to here.
Label: 20 Buck Spin
Year: 2024
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Fulci : Duck Face Killings
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