Fleshold - Pathetic

This Illinois band's first release was the '91 The Finer Arts of Dismemberment demo, and looking at the band logo, demo cover, and songtitles, the signs accurately pointed to death metal of the generic yet competent variety.  Rather than full on brutal or guttural vox, the singer had a fast-paced, more-spoken-than-sung style that was more common for thrash bands, which I didn't mind.

Pathetic, on the other hand, is very nondescript.  The guitars have a death metal like crunchiness, but nothing here is pure death metal.  Particularly on the second half of the album, there are faster parts ("Surface Tension," the beginning of "Realidream") that hark back to the debut demo--but only parts, not full songs.  There's a '90s thrash style grooviness to some of the riffs, and doomier sections here and there, but nothing that definitively categorizes the music.  The vocals are a bit gruffer than the '91 demo but still in the same basic style.

There are enough elements at play here where it's easier to just describe the music than try to categorize it.  Not great, but at least it escapes the Pantera-emulation plague of the '90s.  Have done both much better and much worse for the buck I paid.