Normally it's not a positive indicator when your song titles and lyrical themes end up garnering you more attention than your actual music. Unfortunately this is exactly the case with Defecation Suffocation, the debut album from Canadian death metal outfit Death Toll Rising. I know its death metal so you have to expect a certain amount of gory lyrics and or violent imagery, so I can at least try to get behind songs about chocking to death on a log of shit, spontaneous decapitation and hacking people to bits, that is providing the music is at least somewhat memorable. These five young canucks certainly appear to be talented musicians and yeah ok there are some decent, heavy riffs scattered throughout the course of this disc, but man do they need a crash course in song construction, because unfortunately most of these songs just fall flat. For starters if they changed up the tempos more frequently, delivered some truly killer riffs, not just average ones, and incorporated a little more of the light and shade factor into their compositions, I think it would go a long way. As it stands only one track, the almost eight minute "Transcendence Ritual" displays any of these above qualities.
I'm afraid that Defecation Suffocation is merely an average album. There is certainly potential here and I believe they have all the necessary ingredients in place, but at the same time they really need to address the all important issue of songwriting if they have any hope of taking the next step forward.
Track Listing
1) Visceral Remains
2) Blood Stained Ceiling
3) Defecation Suffocation
4) The Bludgeoning
5) Babyslitter
6) Transcendence Ritual
7) Spontaneous Decapitation
8) The Empath
9) Demon Rot
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