UMUR "Sleaze Merchants" is the debut full-length studio album by US goregrind/death metal act Blood Freak. The album was released through Razorback Records in November 2003. Blood Freak is the brainchild of Neil Smith who performs all instruments and vocals on Blood Freak´s studio recordings.

The music on "Sleaze Merchants" is goregrind/death metal in the tradition of early Carcass. There are literally hundreds of Carcass clones playing this style, but Blood Freak is definitely one of the better ones. They have a tongue in cheek/kitchy kind of approach to the genre which I appreciate. In addition to the fast-paced blasting parts, the tracks also feature mid-paced parts which makes the music a bit easier to digest than your usual blasting grindcore release. Each track on the album opens with a horror movie sample which provides the album with a great kitchy low budget horror movie atmosphere. Check out song titles like "Bloodthirsty Butchers from Beyond", "Flesheaters from Outerspace", "The Cult of the Cannibal Freaks" or "Dr. Cannibal". That´s just priceless bizarre humour.

The vocals are more or less a total ripp-off of the classic Carcass vocal style. That means one sneering, one deep growling, and one gurgling kind of vocal style. It works really well here though and gives the music some needed variation. The 37:04 minutes long album features 22 tracks, and needless to say that they are all pretty short, but that´s great because that´s how this style works the best. Short powerful bursts of aggressive brutality. On a funny sidenote Neil Smith has brewed a fake story about the album. It was supposedly recorded in the late eighties/early nineties and the last couple of tracks are demo tracks with a different sound production, which is supposed to make the story more authentic. I love this little hoax, but of course it´s not true.

The sound production on the album is excellent. It´s powerful and actually rather warm. A bit surprising really. As mentioned the last couple of tracks on the album (the so called demo tracks) feature a more lo-fi sound quality but they still sound pretty great.

I´ve listened to my fair share of Carcass imitators over the years, and while most are entertaining, they seldom really impress. The music on "Sleaze Merchants" is a bit different though and I must say that Blood Freak really hit something special on this one. Maybe it´s the low budget horror movie humour that gets me rolling on the floor or maybe it´s the generally high quality (for the genre) songwriting and pretty skilled musicianship, but "Sleaze Merchants" is a really enjoyable album and a 3.5 - 4 star (75%) rating is deserved.