Spine Extraction: Groovy Death Metal (Bands I Follow on Twitter Part 2)

The second installment of "Bands I Follow on Twitter" features one of the first bands to follow me on twitter, North Carolina death dealers Spine Extraction. 

First off I have to mention their name, Spine Extraction is probably one of my all time favorite band names, up there with Dying Fetus and Signal the Firing Squad (check those bands out too, they're awesome!).  With a name as brutal as Spine Extraction you would expect the music to be just as brutal.  Fortunately Spine Extraction lives up to the brutality of their name.

In my opinion Spine Extraction is a death metal band, but they are not your average run of the mill death metal band that plays very fast songs with constant blast beats from the drummer (nothing wrong with that, I am a big death metal fan).  Instead Spine Extraction has crafted this sort of groove based death metal.  The songs will alternate between slow and fast sections, but you can never escape the groups brutal, infectious, and down right catchy grooves.  A good example of this is their song "Eternity Awaits" off of their self titled debut.  The song starts off with a catchy guitar melody line that instantly gets stuck in your head.  Then you're hit with a mid tempo groove that induces head banging right of the bat.  At the forefront of the band's infectious grooves are the brutal lyrics and death growls of vocalist Tripp King (awesome name by the way!).  The ability Tripp has go hit gut wrenching lows and mind blowing highs with his growls only makes the band that much more brutal and allows them to put their own unique stamp on metal music today. 

Here is their video for "Eternity Awaits"

My favorite song by Spine Extraction has to be "Fleshless".  Much like "Eternity Awaits" it starts off with a slow and catchy groove, Tripp's vocals come in to enhance the brutality of the song (he does a low growl around 0:28 that is just flat out awesome!).  The groove continues until around 1:06 when the fun starts.  The sound of a knife cutting something greats the listener, followed by a blistering fast section that would set off a circle pit at any metal show.  The song continues to alternate between mid tempo sections and fast sections while never loosing the catchiness or brutality it introduced in the beginning.  

Here is the video for "Fleshless" 

Above all one of the things I liked right off the bat about Spine Extraction is how nice they are to their fans.  I always see them retweeting messages that people send to them.  They've retweeted me a bunch of times and are always grateful for every nice thing a fan has to say about them.  Its this kind of attitude that makes me root for them.  Early on they were in a contest to play with Devil Driver, I voted as much as I could and hoped that they would win because they deserved it.  Luckily they did and although I wasn't able to go to the show, I was very happy that they got to open for such an awesome band.  Since then I've seen that they were able to open this year's Summer Slaughter when it rolled through NC and they played a show with Six Feet Under and have one coming up opening for Cannibal Corpse.  I really hope that these guys get signed one day and I am very excited to see what they do in the future.  

Overall if you like death metal and are looking for something different give Spine Extraction a listen.  They're combination of brutality combined with great grooves is sure to appeal to a wide variety of metal fans.  They have their debut CD out now that can be purchased from CD baby or iTunes and are working on a new album to be released in 2013 and when that comes out you can definitely expect me to review it!

Thanks guys!
-Zach

Remember if there is a band you want me to talk about or an album you would like me to review, leave me a comment or tweet me @zachktheanimal!