Aborted started out on the brutal end of death metal, but nowadays they're a little more restrained than that, though that doesn't mean it's watered down in any way. Maniacult won't surprise you if you listen to a wide range of death metal bands ("it's all been done before"), but it's nevertheless a really cool album that contains some rather brutal songs alongside more "melodic" death metal numbers, and when I say "melodic", I don't mean the Gothenburg school, but rather what you might expect from bands like The Chasm—a few passages remind me a lot of them, actually. There's a dark and sometimes slightly melancholic atmosphere going on as well, and even the more pedal-to-the-metal stuff has something going for it other than sheer speed. Good stuff.
