Slam really isn't my favorite genre of death metal as it tends to lack the big, grappler-hold grooves that I like and heavily associate with the genre. Also, like a lot of deathcore bands, slam can end up sounding a little uniform when the few ideas that the band has for a song in this style get spread over the course of an album. Fulci really avoids these problems in at least two very important ways: 1) they've got grooves, 2) they are not short on ideas. The two bands that I would associate with Fulci's sound outside of slam are Cannibal Corpse and Skinless, taking the bone-splinter, 10-ton grooves of the former and the lightening hot leads of the latter and combing them with some very gory sounding vocals results in some absolutely inspired bangers, like the harrowing blast, stomp, and shrieker "Premature Sepoltura," and "Feeding the Undead" which spends half its run time tenderizing you with lashing grooves and the other half slowly grinding you into a soft-serve paste to be enjoyed as a cool and easy snack by a shambling zombie on a hot day at the beach.
The other thing that makes the Fulci interesting is their commitment to the cinematic elements of their sound. The band is none too shy about their love of the famed Italian horror director Lucio Fulci; borrowing his last name for the name of their band, lifting clips of dialog from his films and slicing them into their songs, and even using fan-drawn, alternative posters for his films as their own album art (Opening The Hell Gates's cover depicts numerous scenes from Fulci's 1980 film City of the Living Dead, a stone-cold, mother-fucking classic in my opinion). This focus on cinematic inspiration gives their music somewhat of an atmospheric aesthetic which I appreciate, but further, It inspires some badass songs, like the instrumental bonus track "Paura" which is a death metal take on the theme from City of the Living Dead (named for its Italian title, Paura Nella Città dei Morti Civenti), and incredibly frightful, and surprisingly danceable, soundtrack experiment titled "Inferno II."
Something that falls outside of both Fulci's soundtrack exhibitions and their solid autentico death metal, are their forays into hip-hop. The closing and title track features some real suburb bar trading between somebody who sounds little like B-Real and verses delivered in blood-belching death metal vocals. As much as I like that track, I'm an even bigger fan of their collaboration with Italian beat-down rappers Face Your Enemy on the bonus track "Death by Metal," which features a couple of KRS-One references as well as shout-outs to zombies and other supernatural horrors, delivered with total hostility. There was a lot to love about the original Opening The Hell Gates, and the remastered edition gives you that much more vile material to wallow in. If you haven't already given this unsung classic a spin, now is your chance.
