UMUR
"Victims at Play" is the debut full-length studio album by US, Florida based death metal act Lowbrow. The album was released through Crook'd in 1999. Lowbrow was formed after guitarist Allen West was ejected from Six Feet Under in 1997. His involvement with Obituary had also ended in 1997 after the collaps of that act (he would return to Obituary for a shorter stint when they reunited). The Obituary connection is further strengthened by the fact that Obituary drummer Donald Tardy acts as co-producer on "Victims at Play". West teamed up with four other guys who have played with, among others, Death, Nasty Savage, Massacre and Fester to form Lowbrow.
The music on "Victims at Play" is not surprisingly Obituary influenced death metal. A growling vocalist, relatively simple song structures and an emphasis on brutal mid-paced grooves. They occasionally take the pace down to really slow like they do in "Restoration" or a bit faster paced like they do in "Done It", but the tempo is predominantly mid-paced. The Obituary influence is to the extent where I sometimes expect to hear John Tardy´s distinct sounding growling vocals on top of the music. That´s of course not the case and fortunately lead vocalist Rich Hornberger does a great job and puts his personal stamp on the sound. The rest of the band are pretty tight playing too, but there is a charming organic touch to the delivery and you shouldn´t expect click tracked triggered drumming or other modern precision tricks on this album. This is old school downtuned death metal to the bone.
The sound production is dark, raw and brutal and perfectly suits the music. In fact all elements from the sound production to the musicianship to the songwriting go hand in hand and "Victims at Play" delivers just what it promises. A lesson in crushingly brutal and heavy groove laden old school death metal. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.