Spawned from Hate – Elective Amputation (Review)

Spawned from Hate are a UK death metal band and this is the debut album.

So here we are then, the long overdue first album from Spawned from Hate. I enjoyed 2015’s EP Accelerated Butchery, as well as their 2018 promo, but then…the slaughterhouse went silent.

No longer.

With the drums capable handled by Giulio Galati, (current/ex-drummer of bands such as Deceptionist, Hideous Divinity, Nero di Marte, and Mass Infection), Spawned from Hate have an ironclad backbone from which to launch their gruesome assault.

Containing nine songs, and with a total duration of a lean 30 minutes, Elective Amputation is a lean and brutal monster. The earlier, rawer output of the band has been given a powerful new voice, and the band sound more crushing than ever. It’s a passionate and merciless display of evolved might. Spawned from Hate are here to rip your skull out through your face, and they have the tools and strength to do this.

The two songs showcased on Spawned from Hate’s 2018 promo show up again on Elective Amputation, (one is the title track in fact), but they’ve been shot up with steroids and cybernetically enhanced so that now they match the barbaric heaviness of the rest of the songs here.

Elective Amputation basically consists of brief bursts of brutal mayhem and carnage, each one a hammer to the face and a knife to the gut. Entails everywhere, bones pulverised, life extinguished. There’s no filler, no relenting, just an unforgiving blunt force trauma assault. Yep, this is brutal death metal, and Spawned from Hate mean business.

I should note though that there’s more to Elective Amputation than the simpler, bog-standard stuff that many in the style spew out. That kind of thing is enjoyable enough, and forms the base of many a good band, but the better acts usually offer an enriched version of this. Like those, Spawned from Hate’s music is rooted in that sort of effective baseline heaviness, but they build on this foundation with a few choice cuts from related death metal styles. For example, there’s a technicality here that rears its bladed head in key places, sharpening the Spawned from Hate’s attack. There are also touches of old-school USDM here and there; not many, but you can occasionally hear the slithering touch of a band like Morbid Angel in some of the more sinuous riffs.

Well, I feel bruised all over now just listening to this. Nasty stuff indeed. If you’re accustomed to the style’s barbaric nature, then Spawned from Hate have produced an album that is easy to digest and tastes pretty damn good, even though it will have you vomiting up bloody chunks afterwards.