GUTTED
Bleed for us to Live

Out of print for years, Repulsive Echo’s, Kostas has brought us back both releases from Toledo Ohio’s Gutted.  Gutted were a death metal band who had some hype back in the early-mid 90’s.  These reissues are still highly sought after and probably a repressing is in order, because these reissues are difficult to find and are recent. One of the interesting aspects of Gutted were that 3 of the 4 members, later on were all brothers.  The Ditch brothers.  Mark on vocals/bass, Scott on drums and Michael (RIP) on guitar. Sadly Michael passed away 4 years ago from brain cancer.  Regardless, Gutted were a pretty ripping act.  So let’s get into the first part of the review.

Gutted’s debut album, Bleed For Us To Live was released in 1994 on Red Light Records.  Red Light were picking up all the brutal death metal acts and Gutted were pushed with this album, a lot.  Their ads were all over the place.  When I was with Internal Bleeding I met them a few times and they were cool and they played really heavy live sets.  One of the things Gutted did were write longer than average death metal songs.  While most death metal bands on average would write 3-4 minute tunes, Gutted pushed the song length upwards to 5 – 6 minutes.  Gutted also did not utilize blast beats as much as bands were doing back then.  They had the blasts, but they were never super-fast.  Gutted also were not afraid to have the bass guitar mixed in really well, something a lot of death metal bands did not always mix in well on the albums.  Rounding out Gutted was Billy Mills on guitars as well.