Gorguts: Considered Dead / The Erosion of Sanity, 2CD Deluxe Digipack – Album Review

I’ve been splitting carcasses since ’03. The first week on the floor, they had me wrist-deep in a ruptured gutbag—pig had burst in the chute and nobody wanted to deal with the slurry. They handed me a shovel and said, “You get used to it.” Twenty years on and I haven’t. Not really. I dream in shades of offal and steam. Most folks don’t want to hear about that over dinner.  Gorguts gets it.

I picked up this two-CD reissue after a 14-hour shift. Hands still slick from scrubbing bile out of the drain grates. Popped the plastic with a rib hook because I couldn’t feel my fingers. Played it right there in the corner of the breakroom while my overalls dripped pink into a trash bag.

CD1 – Considered Dead
This one’s a bone saw to the eardrum. “Stiff and Cold” hits like slipping on a puddle of lung blood and catching yourself on the carcass hook—metal to metal, man to meat. The guitar’s lurch is like a tendon snapping under tension. “Disincarnated” makes me think of that sound when you pull a spinal column clean, all the way down—like God unzipping a mistake.

There’s this texture to it. Not just distortion—gristle. It’s almost as if they recorded it inside a cooler stacked with heads. You can feel the cold steel and coagulated noise clogging every second. When Barnes shows up, it’s not a guest spot—it’s a second incision.

Funny thing is, halfway through I realized I’d stopped blinking. Just sitting there, eyes dry, teeth clenching with the rhythm. Just like the old days when I’d work 20 pigs an hour and still hear the screaming after clock-out. This music doesn’t just accompany the violence—it remembers it.

CD2 – The Erosion of Sanity
This one’s smarter. Meaner. Less swinging cleaver, more bone chisel. “Condemned to Obscurity”  isn’t a song—it’s a method of evisceration. There’s a tempo shift in the middle that feels like sawing through the sternum: slow at first, then suddenly through. When you finally break that cavity open and the lungs just collapse. That’s this album.

“Orphans of Sickness” sounds like waking up to the floor hose jammed again, standing ankle-deep in trachea water. It groans. It ferments. It makes your stomach turn but you keep listening, because there’s truth in the stink.

The demo tracks? Raw. Like first cuts with a dull blade—sloppy, loud, unsteady, but determined. They remind me of that new guy we had last winter. Sliced open a cow’s stomach too fast and wore five gallons of chyme. Didn’t quit, though. That kind of resolve is rare.

I lost my first copy of these discs when a fatback slab crushed my locker. I didn’t even hesitate before I ordered another. There’s music you enjoy, and there’s music that stains you. The new package feels right.  The kind of thing you find wrapped in butcher paper behind the saw table. It feels dangerous.

Some people listen to relax. I listen to remember I’m still flesh.
Score 8/10