Debunking the Repudilation/Afterbirth Myths

Disordered coming at you with the second mothafuckin forum post. Today's topic as I'm sure you got from the title are two peculiar bands newgen fans tend to overhype as far as influence on 90's slam goes: Repudilation and Afterbirth. This myth is perpetuated by YouTube channels such as Jimmy From the Block and his fans, who believe New York's Repudilation pioneered the "modern" slam sound with their gutturals and "slam riffs" while newer fans in general tend to blow Afterbirth's impact on the scene outta the water entirely

Repudilation's famous Purging of Impurity (1996) isn't anything more than NYHC/beatdown riffs with blast beats beneath guttural vocals, and while it definitely influenced a specific sound (not too dissimilarly to Internal Bleeding), it did NOT invent or bring the burgeoning subgenre to new heights. 

In 1995 you had the pre-Devourment band, Necrocide, coming out with ultra-groovy blasting slam, and Devourment's seminal 1997 demo Impaled released just a year after Purging of Impurity and sounded alike NOTHING that was out at the time, pioneering the sound slam bands of the late 90s and early 2000s would emulate along with Molesting the Decapitated. 

As far as Afterbirth goes, Justin "J-Dawg" Horval put it best: They're a background death metal band. Yes they might've possessed gutturals as far back as 1994 on the Psychopathic Embryotomy demo, but bands already had gutturals by then as well as sicker riffs, see: Wicked Innocence's 1994 album Anthropological Infestation. 

In conclusion, this is another important topic that I needed to clear up; if you're in the scene you'll know these two bands in particular are given endless amounts of credit for something they didn't help pioneer or push to new heights