Review: Afflicted Truth — Slowly the Body Rots
From the Vault Review: Afflicted Truth – Slowly the Body Rots
If ever there was an album ripe for a revamped album cover, it’s this one. Depicting what looks to be a severely wounded, corpse-like figure dragging itself up a path towards a church, the execution of the art is decidedly very rough. But imagine it redone professionally, and it could be one of the coolest album covers in Christian metal history. It’s just begging for a rerelease! But I digress.
Those who discovered South Africa’s Afflicted Truth via The Seeking of Redemption might be in for a bit of a jolt when they venture all the way back to the band’s early demo from 2000, Slowly the Body Rots. Even the most casual death metal fan is going to pick up on the obvious nod to Obituary’s classic debut Slowly We Rot, but that’s where any similarities to Florida’s death metal titans ends. You won’t find any dirge-like sludgefests or atmospheric horror on here like you would on an early Obituary record; no, Afflicted Truth are death/grind and deal strictly in assaulting the listener not only with a Christian message but a heinous amount of blastbeats and guttural vocals to boot.
What’s interesting, however, is how the band’s earliest demo I can find is somewhat different than the high-speed assaults of later records. Slowly the Body Rots is an ugly record that methodically hammers rather than blitzes with hyperblasting and fiery guitar pyrotechnics. It’s also one of the only recordings by the band to feature not only main man Hilton Lazenby, but his brother Grant Lazenby as well.
Like I said, Slowly the Body Rots is a slightly different affair from later records. Where other ones are blindingly intense, this one goes for a sound more akin to the goregrind noise of Deophobic Necrosis, the hideous gurgling of early Abated Mass of Flesh, with even a touch here or there of early Incantation. Grotesque is the operative word here, with Hilton Lazenby’s bowel-shaking gurgling sounding especially intense on this one. For an Afflicted Truth record, this one leans far more in a death metal direction than a grind one, due to its slower tempos and lessened emphasis on the usual shock-and-awe approach.
If you’re a big fan of death/grind as a style, this is definitely a release you’ll want to check out; for what it lacks in intensity when compared to Afflicted Truth’s later releases, it makes up for in its skin-crawling tone, industrial cold, and ominous feel.
For Fans Of: Deophobic Necrosis, Broken Flesh (early), Incantation (first album), Flesh Incineration, Abated Mass of Flesh (early), Circle of Dead Children
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