Ablation - Lethal Abuse / Victim Kink
"I can still pick out the flavours of ODSM from a recipe - and Ablation is a mouth full of just the good stuff."
SINGLES REVIEW
Lethal Abuse / Victim Kink
Ablation (death metal)
2026 Apr 8 / 2026 May 8
2:41 / 3:21
Iron Fortress Records
I always think of old school death metal as patient zero of my musical interests. It all started with those early albums by Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation, Immolation, Deicide, etc. You know. The parallel evolutions and subsequent combinations of related genres like hardcore and grindcore can’t be ignored - their stylings are now intrinsic to death metal’s current form. And since the pandemic, we’ve been truly inundated with old school death metal (OSDM) revival bands, at varying levels of derivative. But that doesn’t erase the tangible taxonomy that distinguishes these subgenres. I can still pick out the flavours of OSDM from a recipe - and Ablation is a mouth full of just the good stuff.
Made up of members from other legendary death metal bands, Ablation is a supergroup side project featuring Derek Boyer (bass) and Eric Morotti (drums) from Suffocation, Rich Nagasawa (guitars) from Dehumanized, and Devin Swank (vocals) from Sanguisugabogg. If you like any of those bands, that’s what this is. These singles sound as if they were excavated from a long-buried collection of unreleased 90s death metal albums. Production is open and dynamic as you’d expect from this style. Yes, one could justifiably call the guitar tone “thin” by today’s standards. But gosh man, listen to the bass tone! Get a load of that headroom!
Ablation broke onto the scene with their first single and title track to their debut release, Lethal Abuse, on April 8. If you believe first impressions count, rest assured they’ve made a good one. Lethal Abuse comes to life with frantic speed and high-impact transitions like those at 1:11 or 1:47. For a song that isn’t even 3 minutes long, it’s got an interesting composition with lots of different passages - winding melodies at 1:24, slow-down slam time at 1:47, and frenzied tremolo at 2:11. Ablation checks a lot of boxes with this one. And without putting my finger on exactly why this is, it doesn’t feel forced like some other OSDM revival bands. They come by their brutality honestly.
On Victim Kink, the Suffocation influence is undeniable. Maybe it's just the Frank Mullen vocal feature making the track feel like some twisted partial reunion, but I feel like this crunchy bounce pays homage to the progenitors of slam. It’s a more straightforward track compared to Lethal Abuse, building tension with dissonant chords and crawling riffage until the breakdown at 2:36 slowly dissipates the aggression. Maybe it's only because of how close the genres have become in recent years, but I feel strong hardcore influences in this one. I could easily imagine some of these moments belonging to Mongrel or Merauder. That infusion with real deal death metal makes for a potent product.
Ablation’s debut EP drops next Friday. If I were you, I’d have that shit queued up. I’ll be reviewing that in full, so keep an eye on the site.
Lethal Abuse - 8/10
Victim Kink - 7/10
