Gird your loins, bud. Napalm Death and Obituary members fusing together into an experimental industrial crush-feast? Oh man...

Something of a forgotten gem in the field of early 90s industrial metal, Meathook Seed caught initial hype for the heavy Napalm Death connection, with Mitch Harris and Shane Embury (in a smaller role) behind the mechanized razorstorm that debut album Embedded unleashes across these eleven songs. It's a straight-up crusher even by the standards of the time, merging the brutalizing death metal sound of the time with a depraved mixture of electronic technoid rhythms, gargantuan Godfleshian grooves, and airtight mecha-thrash that could evoke a similar apocalyptic frenzy as the best Ministry stuff coming out just prior to this. Taking their name from a notorious avant-garde novella by James Havoc of Creation Records infamy, these guys gave zero quarter, each song picking up in velocity and aggression and mania as you deathcruise through its concise and corrosive forty-six minute run time. This album is a motherfucker, ranking right up there with the aforementioned 'Flesh, the early Pitchshifter stuff, Psalm 69-era Ministry, and Nailbomb's debut as far as I'm concerned. It's got a muscular, barbaric backbeat over the entire thing that delivers the kind of knuckleheaded sonic crush as the heaviest metal / hardcore hybrids of the time, making me bang my head into the desk nonstop, but there's also the presence of these totally warped atonal guitar structures and bizarre electronic flourishes that add this crazed alien vibe to everything.

It is not another Godflesh clone though (not that I have any issue with that approach; the more the merrier) - this doesn't have that exhausting, machinelike repetition. It's much more electronic-heavy while remaining unmistakably "death metal". And really, it's pretty much exactly what I originally thought I was going to get with the pairing of Mitch Harris and Obituary's Trevor Peres on vocals and Donald Tardy on drums. Fuckin' gargantuan. Heavy almost to the point of absurdity. Can I hype this album enough? Probably not. It remains one of my favorite albums of the early 90s period and easily one of the most unique-sounding albums that Earache ever put out, a ten-song tectonic plate-shift of behemoth beats and precise, skull-caving death metal drumming (technoid and EBM-esque rhythms winding around Tardy's more straightforward percussive crush), those truly evil vocals from Peres, who really steps up to the plate here, delivering a demonic distorted sneer, wild hardcore bellow, and occasional cyborg howl that's incredibly harsh sounding, and that awesome blend of deathgrind guitar riffs, quasi-Voivodian chordal weirdness (check out the nutzoid shit happening on stuff like "My Infinity") , and washes of distorted discordance from Harris. From the start of opener "Famine Sector", shit sounds absolutely berserk. Groove coming out of your eyeballs. Bulldozing double-kick work and seemingly (deceptively) simple, Frostian riffs contorting into off-kilter time signatures. Noise-drenched static fields and harsh electronic textures sweep over churning dirges. Spastic electronic sequencers go bugfuck alongside that pummeling guitar assault. Sleek cinematic pads emerge from knuckledragging ultra-crush.

I can imagine the pit getting downright stupid with these guys belting this shit out on stage. Ooof.

Then it swerves hard left for the lengthy closer "Sea Of Tranquility", where Shane Embury sits in with samplers to assist the construction of this sprawling multi-layered soundscape. For nearly fifteen minutes, thre group blends looping noise and effects with trance-inducing, kinetic tribal beats (which resemble tabla or some similar hand-percussion) , creepy sound collage , psychedelic synth-like textures, hard-nosed breakbeats, at times evoking the likes of Scorn or one of Bill Laswell's more abrasive experimental outfits. This is actually makes for a rad finale after that previous haklf-hour of having them stomp my cranium into the asphalt, wrapping it all up in a cyberpunk haze of oneiric urban ambience, choral textures, druggy rhythmic interplay, and complex loopscapes that build towards an unexpected but powerful orchestral climax that makes me want to tear a hole in the sky...

Right up therer towards the top of my list of essential industrial death metal albums. Gnarly.