Album Review: (Death Metal/Grind) LACE PUMA – “Snatch And Sniff”
Brutal death metal is one of those subgenres of music that has a limited zone of what can be added or removed from the formula in order to maintain the label. Blasting drums? Yes, by the tankload. Loud, raging guitars? Indeed, without end. Vocals so guttural and deep that you swear the vocalist gargles lava before bedtime? None deeper. Lace Puma may just be the most brutal of the brutal. Not only do they fit every stereotype, they do it so well as to be the prototype. When the first riff of opener “Plunge The Abyss” kicks in, you are probably already transported to the epicenter of your own personal mindquake. How could a band this genius go unsigned for the 2 or 3 months they were around before releasing this, you’ll inevitably wonder. By the time you are elbow deep into the second song “Love For Dessert”, you are possibly comatose, or in a deep meditative trance, enchanted by the sheer brutality and pummeling from this absolute cacophony. Songs like “I’ll Never Leave You Again This Time For Real Girl”, “Lacey Boyz Get The Girlz”, and “Enter The Pink Palace” will leave you beaten and battered on the floor until your soul leaves your body, and threatens to never come back until another band this great inhabits the Earth. Face it, after you listen to this you’ll swear off death metal forever, as this will set the bar so high that Chuck Schuldiner himself would have to reincarnate into four people of equal talent to even come close. If you only buy your parents one album this year, make it “Snatch And Sniff”. Lace Puma will be the band that our great-grandchildren will still herald as the greatest ever.
