Pillory is an extreme death metal band from Boston, Massachusetts, United States. ‘No Lifeguard At The Gene Pool’ is their debut album, so at the very least they came up with a beautiful title. However, beauty is not exactly the first word that springs to mind, when listening to the music: oh dear… This stuff is really extreme. It is right on the edge of music. At the boundary of where music stops and barking madness and screaming insanity begin. This CD brought me to the very edge of my musical taste, but I found redemption in words and sheer brutality.

‘Glandular’ is the album opener and from the first second you know you have to brace yourself for incredible ear punishment. Triple double kick drums, twenty-seven extremely low riffs per song, low grunting mixed hardcore like vocal stuff and some howling screams here and there. To put it briefly: the psych ward.

In keeping with that psych ward-feel, you’d expect the lyrics to be about defacing sluts, slitting throats, mass-murder and blood and gore, but that’s really far from the case. The lyrics are about modern slavery: having to work terrible jobs to keep yourself alive and therefore being trapped in a cycle and / or the system. About how society creates psychos, about idiots as world leaders, assimilation of immigrants and the fact that we’re all idiots who by accident lead the food chain.

Back to the music. ‘Somewhere Between’, ‘The Morning Grind’ and ‘Welfare Gun’ continue on the path tread upon from kick-off. There is a lot of variety in the riffs, in the pacing, in the drums and in the vocals. Of course, that pretty much comes with the territory when you make this kind of music, but Pillory have done it quite well. Especially the vocal variety is nice, for an enduring guttural grunt would bore to bits after fifteen minutes.

In stead, Pillory offers the (somewhat Deicide reminiscent a couple of times, which I find too much) guttural grunt, but they relieve it with angry screams, hardcore like bravado and doing those three all at once, from time to time. It is a lot to take in, but it does keep the album listenable.
Finally in the fifth song, we hear a breakdown. A pause from the carnage: a jazzy, odd rhythm with awkward clean guitar loops and all kind of drum-related sounds. Of course, a breakdown can only last so long in extreme death metal and so after thirty seconds, the butchery ensues, albeit at a lower pace. That pace change and breakdown are well placed as ‘Irritated As A Hangnail In A Fingerfuck’ (nice) is the middle of nine songs on ‘No Lifeguard At The Gene Pool, and the listener need some new strength to carry on listening the second half.
That second half delivers exactly what the first has learned us to expect. A song with yet again a great title, ‘No Room For Retards’, is one of two true highlights of the second half, together with ‘Siren’. Instrumentally they are the most interesting. There’s a really good mix of high sounds to go with the low riffs in ‘No Room For Retards’ and there are some mighty ingenious riffs in ‘Siren’.

It has to be said that this is a very ‘nice’ extreme death metal album. It is a bit much at times, but especially the vocal variety and great lyrical content form a very good safety net. ‘No Lifeguard At The Gene Pool’ is a musical abattoir of an album. It is a violent and extreme punishing of eardrums and organs. Once the massacre, the deranged bloodshed stops after 37 minutes and 50 seconds, you’re relieved, but also left in admiration of this brutal product.