UMUR
"Amusing Anecdotes for the Depraved" is the debut full-length studio album by grindcore act Maniac Killer. The album was released through No Escape Records in 2004. Maniac Killer is a one-man project featuring Maniac Killer ("Maniac Neil" Smith) on vocals, guitar, bass, and drum programming. Smith is also known for his involvement in acts like Whore, Frightmare, Lord Gore, and especially Blood Freak.
If you´re familiar with any of the acts mentioned above, it´s probably not that surprising that the music on the 43 track, 37:16 minutes long album is goregrind with programmed drums. Well...the above artists use real drummers, so in that respect Maniac Killer is a bit of a different journey for Smith. The lyrical themes which revolves around B-Horror movies, splatter and gore are as present as ever though, which is fully on display when reading song titles like "The God of Cum Filled Open Wounds", "Masturbating in the Blood Dripping From the Dangling Freshly Butchered Corpse of a 2 Year Old Child", and "Cum and See the Amazing Deformed Dildo Psycho Cunt Mangler". And that´s just 3 out of 43 very imaginative song titles on "Amusing Anecdotes for the Depraved". It´s kinda cheesy and therefore it´s a bit hard to get really offended by, even though some of the song titles and lyrics are obviously very vile. But the whole sick humour mixed with blood´n´gore is something of a speciality for Smith.
The actual music on the album is a lo-fi produced (recorded at two different sessions, which feature different sounding productions) and at times very noisy type of goregrind, featuring completely unintelligible growling, gurgling, and screaming vocals. The material is very one-dimensional (all tracks are around 1 minute long or shorter), and you probably wouldn´t be able to tell when one track stops and another starts if it wasn´t for the many intro/outro horror movie samples, which all work to great effect. In fact I´d call them the highlight of the album, because the music sure isn´t that interesting and doesn´t exactly leave a lasting impression either. While you don´t always notice that the drums are programmed, there are moments when it´s obvious and the artifical sound of the drums on those sections make an odd contrast to the otherwise noisy and organic soundscape.
I generally perceive Neil Smith as one of those great unsung underground musicians, that few know or will ever know about, and some of his output is really great within it´s genre (I can highly recommend his Blood Freak project). Unfortunately the same can´t be said about "Amusing Anecdotes for the Depraved", which to my ears is a bit of a missfire. The signature sick humour, the blood´n´gore lyrical themes and imagery, and the well placed horror movie samples, are all there and accounted for, but the actual music doesn´t live up to Smith´s usual standards and a 2 star (40%) rating is therefore warranted.