While the number in the band’s name is a little bit excessive, 200 Stab Wounds are a band looking to take no prisoners, whether you’re dispatched with the first incision or the two hundredth, it makes no difference to them. After forming in January 2020 and erupting onto the underground metal scene with their debut EP Piles Of Festering Decomposition, the band have been thrust into the frontline as a standard bearer for the new breed of death metal. The band have cemented this status early on by sharing the stage with the likes of Sanguisugabogg, Knocked Loose and Gatecreeper. Adding elements of modern hardcore alongside the rustic, old school stylings like those of Cannibal Corpse and Dying Fetus, 200 Stab Wounds is not for the faint of heart. Slave To The Scalpel is the band’s highly anticipated debut album; it pulls no punches and leaves no prisoners.
Firstly, a small disclaimer, if you’re squeamish then the concepts behind this album will make your ears curl and possibly trigger your guts to spew up until the acidic bile crawls up your throat. The album’s themes are exactly what you’d expect; a cannibal’s wet dream. Slave To The Scalpel is a bubbling stew pot of body parts, entrails and offal, with a congealed skin floating on the stop. With references to human flesh being consumed as a tasty morsel, washed down with milk made from skin and finished off with “raw penis filled with curdled semen”. Even for a seasoned death metal fan, that is enough to make even the hardest of stomachs churn. Conceptually, it is fair to say that Slave To The Scalpel is a collection of songs that revel in grotesque, cannibalistic debauchery and the plethora of putrid mess associated with it.
What stands out musically is the hardcore style bounce that permeates the album. Whilst harnessing the power of old school death metal riffing and blast beats, there is something refreshing about how the band have incorporated the beatdown chugging of hardcore to give the album a unique energy. Even though incorporating hardcore and death metal is nothing new, 200 Stab Wounds have put their own unique twist on it. Riff transitions between sections are smooth and played with significant cohesion, as if the band had been together for twenty years and not one. Using various sound clips throughout the album and eerie interlude style introductions on ‘Phallic Filth’ and ‘Paths To Carnage’, there is an eerie, uncomfortable, oppressive and sinister atmosphere to the album. The songs thrive off of your horror and fear, becoming more intense as the album goes on. ‘Tow Rope Around The Throat’ man handles you back into consciousness after the harrowing experience dished out on ‘Skin Milk’. While songs like ‘Drilling In Your Head’ and ‘Itty Bitty Pieces’ make you feel like you’ve been thrown into a meat grinder. While the album doesn’t break the mould of death metal, it does breathe new life into the genre, just so it can flog it some more with even more evolved and sophisticated methods of sonic destruction.
Slave To The Scalpel in many aspects is a resounding success from a debut album, stomping all over Piles Of Festering Decomposition as if it wanted to erase it from existence. Whilst it pays tribute to the death metal legends with their pulsating pustules and veteran grimness and incorporates the new sounds of hardcore, it is fair to say 200 Stab Wounds have shaken up the death metal world with Slave To The Scalpel. They’re taking names and stacking corpses as they go.