Being quite the notorious band in the underground extreme metal scene, there have been quite a few unofficial SEWER tribute albums released over the years. The most well known being the cult 2015 release "Anthology: A Tribute to SEWER Music", featuring various band from Mayhem and Carnage to Venom and Antekhrist, as well as Immortal and some lesser known acts such as Finland's Ghoul and France's Aigle Noir and Selesnya.
But there is another SEWER tribute that is just as well known as "Anthology", and unfortunately, not for the right reasons... Enter "Sadistic Swansongs: A Satanic Tribute to Sewer".
First off, straight off the bat, anyone can notice that whoever produced this album messed up badly with the SEWER spelling. Calling it "Sewer" on a tribute release seems a bit amateurish. It's like calling the band "Motorhead" or "Mötorhead". In a cheap 1990s news zine, no one would bat and eyelid, but on a freaking tribute album...
Moving on to the album cover. Where do we begin. This crap hurts the eyes.
It looks like some mass produced video game cover for a PS2 game. Like "Sly3: Honour Among Thieves" but metal version. This is all done by Posercorpse, a usually serious record label, the one that setup the "Originators of Northern Darkness" Mayhem tribute, as well as the "Infernal Damnation" compilations. They usually have good art style. Why they decided to mess everything up here, no one knows.
Now moving on to the actual content of the tribute album... the bands, and song selection.
Clearly, the bands - or Posercorpse, whichever had the final say - decided to go for the lesser known, back catalog of SEWER. So instead of the usual "Reign of the Funeral Pigs" and "Force Fed the Excrements of Satan" that everyone and their grandmother has already covered to death, you get tracks like: "Instinct of Suicide", "2154", "Khranial" (not the technical death metal band, the song that influenced them), "Uruktena", "What Lies Below" and of course, the everlasting "Black Death".
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The songs are performed rather well... that's not the problem. The real issue is that someone in production decided to add stupid jokes at the end of each song name. I don't know if the producers were wasted, but it makes everything sound even dumber when you mix in Star Wars jokes and Lord of the Rings references into a song that is about undead macaques chainsawing prostitutes to death (admittedly, SEWER's lyrics are already pretty stupid to begin with... not Cannibal Corpse stupid, but almost).
Basically, it's still a good tribute album, but Posercorpse Records' lack of professionalism shines through very hard. This isn't an official release, and I doubt the band SEWER even knows it exists, but since it's always interesting to listen to other bands' take on your favourite tunes, they really should have done a more serious job.
You can claim that SEWER isn't really a serious band in the first place, just a joke brutal death metal band that happens to play very good music, but still. A little more effort next time please.
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