Aborted - "Global Flatline" Review

I've always felt that brutal death metal as a whole was a genre that never reached its potential. For every Suffocation or Fleshgod Apocalypse, there are two dozen bands who are content to chug on single notes and perform off-time blast beats with no respect for songwriting. Thankfully, Aborted has managed throughout the band's career to avoid the worst aspects of the genre, while giving fans everything there is to love about it. Between lyrics straight out of a 1970's Italian exploitation flick and heavy riffing, Aborted has always been way ahead of the band's peers, to say nothing of the songwriting ability of band mastermind and sole original member Sven de Caluwe.
“Global Flatline” is still very much a continuation of Aborted's previous work, showing off Sven's unique vocal patterns, unconventional, but always interesting, song structures and B-cinema sound clips. In short, it's another Aborted album, which is very much a good thing. Those worrying need not fear, as not much has changed from the lineup changes, except for the level of musicianship greatly improving. “Global Flatline” fully cements Aborted as one of death metal’s elite, and there hasn't been a collection of brutal death metal songs this catchy since Cannibal Corpse’s “Kill,” or possibly even Suffocation's “Pierced From Within.”
Jason Netherton of Misery Index and Trevor Strnad of The Black Dahlia Murder, among others, provide guest vocals, which really help Aborted expand their sound without breaking out of their comfort zone. It goes to show exactly far the band has come in terms of diversifying its sound. The best part about the guest vocals is that they aren't anything that Sven couldn't pull off live, while still making the album sound collaborative, rather than just including random guest spots. This is ultimately what brutal death metal should be, and the rerecording of “Nailed Through Her Cunt” really shows how much Aborted has not only refined their sound, but has always been awesome.
This is the kind of album that knows how to use blast beats tastefully (i.e. not using them all the damn time) and really gives off a sense of, dare I say it, class to death metal. While not a finely-aged wine, it's still way more Franziskaner than PBR; something that the masses can enjoy, with enough quality for the elite to take pleasure in it.

Highs: Catchy riffing (especially in “Of Scabs & Boils”), complex songwriting, more guest vocals than a rap album
Lows: Some of the material was copied from the band’s previous EP and another track was taken from “Engineering the Dead”
Bottom line: "Global Flatline" is more refinement than revolution, not that that's a bad thing.

"Aborted has always been way ahead of the band's peers, to say nothing of the songwriting ability of band mastermind and sole original member Sven de Caluwe."