Metal Underground.com

Nearing 20 years of death metal domination, Aborted has had plenty of time to land on a trademark sound and then refine it with each successive release. Still going strong with an eighth full-length album, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that “The Necrotic Manifesto” consists of high quality, polished death metal that's ear-crushing from the first moment to the last.

Making frequent use of voice overs for atmosphere and mood, the album opens with infamous cenobite Pinhead intoning “I Am Pain!” before a relentless barrage of blistering guitar riffs and rapid-fire drum fills explode out of your speakers. There's top-notch headbanging material across the whole album, and the onslaught manages to never get repetitive or boring, even while remaining on the highest end of brutality for essentially the entire run time.

“The Necrotic Manifesto” is amazingly well-rounded for a brutal death metal album, as that's a genre that tends to be a one-trick wonder that doesn't know how to branch out. It would be erroneous to label this “melodic death metal,” but there's most definitely a sense of higher-order songwriting that goes well beyond just brutality, with plenty of tempo changes, interludes, and guitar solos that keep all the tracks consistently interesting. There's everything from the slower moving “Die Verzweiflung” to the distorted vocal filter on “Excremental Veracity” that flirts with – but thankfully doesn't actually become – the pig squeal sound.

On the lyrical and concept fronts, Aborted covers essentially what you'd expect: gore and horror in all its many forms, covering topics as diverse as the Hellraiser universe and messiah figures like David Koresh who use their influence to engage in sex with the gullible. For the most part the vocals are too guttural to follow without the lyric insert, but a smattering of voice overs from various movies offer brief moments of respite in-between the metal.

Simply put: if you dig death metal, you'll probably love “The Aborted Manifesto.” Although not groundbreaking or overly original, all of the tracks are top-notch and there's plenty of variation within the sound, making it both devastating and entertaining for a full 40+ minutes.