There’s nothing subtle about 200 Stab Wounds. The Cleveland quartet plays death metal with all the nuance of a power drill to the temple—an experience they describe in detail on “Drilling Your Head,” the lead single from their debut, Slave to the Scalpel. Alongside their Maggot Stomp labelmates Sanguisugabogg and Inoculation, 200 Stab Wounds are helping to establish Ohio as a new headquarters for brutal, bludgeoning death metal. Slave to the Scalpel demonstrates the band’s outstanding command over the core elements of the sound. The album rumbles by in a concise 28 minutes, only relenting in its barrage of knuckle-dragging riffs and pummeling drums to deploy the occasional gross-out sample or chintzy keyboard melody. It also suggests that the band has room to grow.
Like most of their peers in the death metal scene, 200 Stab Wounds are heavily indebted to the genre’s past. Slave to the Scalpel borrows from the bone-dry lurch of Chris Barnes-era Cannibal Corpse, the over-the-top brutality of Dying Fetus, and the guttural ignorance of Mortician, among others. The album can feel like a game of spot-the-influence, but that’s not uncommon in the old-school death metal revival. It’s the execution that matters most, and 200 Stab Wounds clearly know what they’re doing. Guitarists Lance Buckley and Steve Buhl trade chunky, bottom-heavy riffs and frenetic solos, while bassist Ezra Cook and drummer Owen Pooley hold the songs together with lockstep precision, whether riding a groove or inciting a breakdown. A dialed-in rhythm section is critical in death metal, and that’s already 200 Stab Wounds’ greatest strength.
Buoying the band’s tight playing is their pitch-black sense of humor. Slave to the Scalpel’s opening track is called “Skin Milk,” and, yes, that is a pun on “skim milk.” Our narrator pours it over his cereal, which he eats out of a bowl fashioned from a split-open skull. Cannibalism is a tried-and-true motif in death metal, and for longtime fans of the genre, it’s all but lost its ability to shock. 200 Stab Wounds are smart to lean into its comedic potential instead. The “stew made out of you” they cook up on “Stifling Stew” isn’t particularly unsettling—but it is darkly funny.
“Itty Bitty Pieces” is the best song on Slave to the Scalpel, as well as the most vivid rendering of the 200 Stab Wounds aesthetic. It’s built around a chugging, groovy riff that stomps down a path of destruction while squealing guitar harmonics stab around its edges. Buhl moans a surprisingly catchy hook in his deep growl: “Turn your bones into dust/Flay your skin into mush/Cut you up into itty bitty pieces/I’ll save you for lunch.” Then, the song takes a strange detour. For a full minute, all we hear is pitch-shifted retching noises, synthesizer bloops, and sustained, atonal notes from Buhl and Buckley’s guitars. It seems like the song might fade from there, but it’s a false ending. When the full band kicks back in for a vicious coda, it’s the most intense passage on the album.
More often, the songs on Slave to the Scalpel land just shy of their potential. 200 Stab Wounds boil down death metal to its essence, which means they live and die by the riff—and not every riff on the album is memorable. There’s a kind of unpretentious brilliance in the simplicity of their compositions, but too often, that simplicity is all they’re bringing to the table. This is solidly executed death metal for people already devoted to the genre. Still, 200 Stab Wounds are too talented not to eventually stumble upon the spark that will set them apart. In the meantime, Slave to the Scalpel is an offering to the heads.
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