Album review: Party Cannon – Volumes Of Vomit

What’s the common ground between alcohol-fuelled excess and death metal’s staple lyrical diet of really unpleasant things happening to people’s bodies? Spewing your guts out, of course. You’ll find a collage of Party Cannon’s fans doing just that in the artwork for the Scots berserkers’ second symphony of sickness, Volumes Of Vomit. It’s fair to assume the Dunfermline degenerates aren’t currently doing Dry January, unless it’s at the express order of a healthcare professional.

Slam is not a subgenre overly concerned with originality or progression, its stylistic trademarks of guttural, animalistic grunts, relentless beats and neanderthal riffs peppered with squealing pinch harmonics kept deliberately predictable to achieve maximum lowbrow brutality. Party Cannon tick these boxes with such force as to make Volumes Of Vomit a no-brainer. In every sense.

That said, they do stand out amongst their peers, and not just because of their possession of a working sense of humour, evident both in their purist-baiting logo and song titles like Tactical Chunder and I Believe In Dani Filth. Crucially, they keep things interesting in what can be a pretty functional scene, leaning into grindcore territory with suitably frenzied results and throwing random curveballs like the clanging bass micro-solo in Electric Soldier Porygon. Their weighty grooves are sufficiently convincing to inspire head-nodding rather than eye-rolling in the unconverted, and there’s a compositional dexterity evident throughout that sustains many of these tracks past the six-minute mark.

Ultimately, this is a band who are extremely good at what they do, a job description which involves both blasting barbarity and acting the giddy goat. The division between moronic and iconic just got a little blurry – though that might just be all the booze…

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: Devourment, Cannibal Corpse, Dying Fetus

Volumes Of Vomit is released on January 14 via Gore House.