Gory Blister – Earth-Sick

Gory Blister is a technical death metal band from Milan, Italy and “Earth-Sick” is their fourth album. I admit that when I saw the name Gory Blister I was not expecting very much of the band. I figured the music would be a boring, muddy wall of fuzz with terribly croaked vocals and lyrics about dismembering hookers. The name does not inspire intense revulsion or fear like some death metal names; I mean come on, ooh a blister. I am so scared. Maybe they can tour with Painful Bruise and Vicious Hangnail.

Despite the rather weak band name, I was surprised to find that they play some pretty decent music. The music is mid-to-fast paced, heavy and features a lot of technical and melodic guitar work (melodic within the context of death metal.) The vocals are harsh, raspy and somewhat deep sounding. I have heard better death metal vocals, but I have also heard worse. These vocals fall into the realm of acceptable since the music balances them out. I just noticed that Karl Sanders from Nile does guest vocals on two tracks. That is cool; nothing like a big name to lend some validity to an album. Karl has some wicked, deep gravelly vocals.

The production sounds pretty good. I might mix the regular vocals a wee bit louder in the mix just to give them a little more oomph, but otherwise I like the production. The album clocks in at 35 minutes over the course of ten songs. I feel as though 35-40 minutes is a nice duration for an album of this style, so this works out nicely.

Sometimes bands with cool names and album art turn out to suck, and sometimes bands with goofy names surprise you with being pretty solid. In this case, it turned out to be the latter; “Earth-Sick” is pretty ok in my opinion. Give them a listen on Facebook, MySpace or the YouTube video below.