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GUTLESS
High Impact Violence

Me Saco Un Ojo / Dark Descent (2024)
Rating: 7.5/10

Hmmm, I’m not sure what to think of the cartoon gore cover of this debut full-length from Melbourne, Australia-based combo Gutless? It’s certainly less primitive and more goofy than the the band’s 2018 Mass Extinction demo. Even so, High Impact Violence remains a highly anticipated release that’s the musical equivalent to blunt force trauma, or, as the cover art suggests, a brick to the skull.

Choppy in its instrumentation and gruff in its equally forceful vocals – which sound like Deicide’s Glen Benton choking on Bigfoot pubes – High Impact Violence is a lot less sludgy or swampy than a lot of today’s offerings, preferring instead to be relatively prosaic in its direct punishing design. Like tumultuous waters, songs such as ‘Gore God’ and ‘Beyond The Catacombs’ are formed as chunky barrages, thickened by the punchy barks that navigate the rough waves as grunted commands.

To an extent, this album has more in common with the mid-to-late 90s era but less tech savvy, instead focusing on meaty blocks of pummeling that result in bellowing mid-paced expressions. For me, the most intriguing thing about this opus is the lack of progression; the band is done with that and so am I. So many old school sounding bands of today, for example Tomb Mold, have mimicked some of the early 90s acts by branching out their sound into wistful, weird and progressive landscapes, but Gutless have done the reverse, simplifying their sound and relying on a hefty bludgeoning riff count and straight laced butchery.

The track ‘Bashed And Hemorrhaging’ is very much a sign of the Gutless times; a rampant yet moshing vandal that terrorizes the eardrums with its barbaric thrashing. There are no gimmicks to behold here. Gutless doesn’t provide overlong or self-indulgent plateaus, just no nonsense deliveries which never overstay their welcome, like the gargantuan ‘Carved Into Existence’, the churning ‘Avalanche Of Viscera’ and brain-munching closer ‘Viral Infection’.

High Impact Violence is very much a smash n’ grab effort. At a duration of just over 26 minutes, Gutless leaves us thirsty for more but also a touch disappointed that such an eagerly awaited gory mashing is so brief in spite of its flurry of jabs and heavyweight right hooks. Impactful, yes. Violent, yes. Permanent damage, no.

Neil Arnold

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