Guttural Secrete lets tensions run high

The one lonely ceiling fan is no match for the heat the two dudes beneath it are currently conjuring.

The room is hot and getting hotter, the air as thick as the savage slam riffs that Randy Thompson’s currently laying down. The setting on his guitar effects unit reads “brute nasty” and that’s exactly what his playing sounds like: dense, mean, impenetrable.

Drummer Mike Fitzgerald alternates blast beats, played with elbows locked, with quick-wristed fills, not so much keeping time as racing against it. Together, they’re half of Vegas death metal mainstays Guttural Secrete, rehearsing for a rare show Friday night at Boomers.

“I need to go outside for a minute,” Thompson says afterward, taking off his ball cap to wipe the sweat off his brow before having a smoke in his driveway.

Fitzgerald sips an energy drink. They look winded, but satisfied.

Though Guttural Secrete has been together for a decade, they’ve been much busier of late, playing their first shows in three years last summer and finishing their second full-length record, “Nourishing the Spoil.” It follows 2006’s “Reel of Pubescent Despoilment,” a bilious, gut roiling favorite in underground death metal circles. They’re choosing a final mix for “Nourishing,” due out in late summer/early fall.

“It’s a little bit more chaotic, but we still tried to keep that groove element, that catchy element,” Fitzgerald says . “We experimented with some different sounds on this one. It’s technical and there’s a lot of complex arrangements within songs, but it’s super-duper heavy from front to back.”

The record’s a long time coming for these dudes, who have been piecing it together for years now. But they’re a blue collar bunch, and the demands of their day jobs often take priority.

“We’ve always been a straight up construction band,” says Thompson . “We show up (for practice) dirty, after work, in our work boots. We don’t want to be there; we’re grumpy. Sometimes tensions just run a little high.”

Their music is an outlet for said tensions, which manifest themselves in the band’s dark, concussive rumble. But there is a pitch-black sense of gallows humor to it all, mainly in how lyrically over-the-top songs such as “Razorized Ball Gag” and “Gluttonous Portions of Intestinal Seepage” can be.

Credit frontman Blue Jensen for the depravity.

“Usually, we’re all at work or something, and Blue will call somebody up, ‘Hey, I got some lyrics,’ ” Thompson says. “You’re just driving around in a work truck or whatever, and then Blue starts reading off his stuff and you just start laughing.”

Thompson punctuates the recollection with a smile. He’s earned one.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.