The album art being the first thing I see, of course, I was immediately piqued seeing that of Fertile Soil of Immorality.  The color palette of red against the neutral cell walls.  The art style is reminiscent of the air-brushed shirts I recall seeing at the Mexican flea market we’d go to when I was a kid.  The menacing figures: a prisoner under a shroud of an executioner hood blocking the door, head in hand.  A possibly MS-13(?) affiliated figure, crouched over his thoroughly stabbed up rival, glaring outward as if the viewer is about to be next if they say any damn thing about it.  The band logo is stark, and hard as hell.  Almost in-between that of a death metal and beatdown hardcore style.  The blood dripping title on the wall.  It’s the wildly ‘ignorant’ death metal album art of my dreams.  I felt so strongly that before I checked out the first track on YouTube I had a tinge of anxiety; what if the music doesn’t hold up to the art… I’d be severely bummed.

I chose the interestingly titled “Ambient Passages of Despair”.  My immediate reaction:  clearly programmed drums…but will they work well?  The intro riff comes in.  Ok, we are groovin.’  I can picture walking down the third level cell block corridor, survival weighing on my mind.  Last and in NO way least, what if the vocals are really garbage thin inhales.  Another breaking factor..  The vocals come in.  Aaaaaaaaand…They are siiiiick!  Course, textured, low slung, bottom of the lower intestine gutturals.  Sounding somewhere between Erik Lindmark circa Path of the Weakening and Reduced To Ashes, and the low croaks of Joe Paoline on Mortal Decay’s Forensic.  Exactly the style of guttural that will endear a brutal death metal band to me over any others, regardless of the riffs.  Everything about this is my lane of death metal.

Now I need to know more about who’s in this band, and where I can order a physical copy.  Well, dear readers, Cell Block Autopsy proved somewhat darkly mysterious.  The label webstore and Instagram don’t acknowledge the release.  Even though the label put it up on it’s own Youtube account.  Odd.  Subsequently, I switch to search for some information on who exactly is behind the assumed to be a one-man project.  Naturally, I’m headed to Metal Archives.  The band and album Metal Archives page’s are sparse, only noting New Mexico as the location.  No members are listed even.  Alright… next the Bandcamp page is similarly sparse save for the two-line description, the second of which notes “Coming from the ash of Discharge by Death”.  A clue!  Discharge by Death must be the creators’ former band.  I find it on bandcamp and listened.  Definitely sounds like it came from the same mind.  Certainly, the same guitar player/songwriter was behind the band.  Pulling up the Discharge by Death Metal Archives page I’m met with a wild paragraph, a tabloid, detailing that all the members are in prison.  Two serving LIFE bids in prison for first-degree murder.

Whoooooa.  Ok…

After a bit more Google gymnastics it’s apparent that Cellblock Autopsy is the solo output of a Larry “Torch” Lyanna, possibly serving a life sentence.  A 2010 interview with Torch, by Putrefactive Effect Zine confirms he is in fact serving a life sentence at a New Mexico prison.  According to the interview, and Discharge by Death bio, the victim was attempting to rape a 13 year old girl.  One or both of the defendants intervened, killing the victim with a hammer and disposing of the body.  No edgy gimmick here.  “Discharge by Death” is a term and disposition in prison that indicates the status of a deceased inmate.  “Cell Block Autopsy”, is an obvious prison reference. Mystery solved I’d say.

For a man behind bars, Torch has been incredibly active in death metal.  Having created the cover art for several death metal albums over the years in addition to releasing at least one album, as well as perhaps this one.  It’s fascinating to read that the New Mexico prison affords inmates the privilege of instruments, and practice space, and means to record.  Torch indicates that he is up for a parole hearing after 30 years, having already served 19 at the time of the interview.  Doing the math Torch is possibly out on parole as of this writing.  Perhaps he was able to record this on the outside.  I’d be extremely interested in an update on his situation.

Over repeated listens I am pleasantly surprised at the quality of riffs and songwriting considering the first impression one might get from the cover and name.  Riffs that both set a mood, and bring the ruckus.  Take for example the dramatic, sickly riff starting at 1:34 in “Fertile Soil of Immortality”.  This transitions to a short rhythmic chugging part with vocals, into a sorrowful harmonic passage, back into bdm chug.  There’s a pleasant familiarity that near perfectly recalls the more brutal offerings of the 90s.  Unsurprising considering Torch is of that generation.  It’s also crawling with the flare of good old-fashioned metal solo’s.  Often neglected by new slam bands, or if they are there present, can be rather formulaic progressions. The solo’s here are equally melodic and sinister, adding so much to the high blood pressure tension of prison existence that the album reinforces.  There are even a few really nice acoustic features to balance the rough stuff.

The only detraction to this chronicle of solitary confinement psychosis is some of the recording fidelity.  Like lines of a barbed wire armband tattoo, the recording mix is damn thin.  The guitar and bass could believably have been recorded on a cell phone, straight up.  However, to compensate I found jacking up the bass and mids 50% from the center is enough to give the record the missing meat.  So before you even give it the first arm-crossed sample listen and pass judgment, adjust the eq of your stereo or device.  I think the content outweighs the thin sound  Despite what may be a glaring issue for many it can be easily remedied.  With that adjustment, Fertile Soil of Immorality is a homicidal journey of better than it has a right to be written, Texas adjacent, ratchet as f*sck, grooving brutal death metal.

By the end of February American media was buzzing about a respiratory virus and new cases discovered here.  China was already taking heavy measures and locking down whole cities.  Despite this, it didn’t feel quite the time stopping event that it would soon be.  That would happen the week my trip was planned.  Two days before we were scheduled to fly both the US and UK announced travel restrictions.  Massive buzz kill.  Having spent the few months familiarizing myself, the oft referred “brown metal” band’s strange catalog (mostly) grew on me.  Like a slowly coiling vine that began at the ankle I barely noticed it reach my arms.  What went from a weary homework assignment eventually bore real appreciation and enjoyment.

“Brown metal”…?  Do we need this? What do they mean with this?…[seven albums later]… Ok, this is unquestionably brown metal.  Lugubrum are the trickster intellectual’s take on black metal.  A sound that would play most fittingly in the environment of an old European cafe.  Darkly stained wood floors and bar meet darkly stained patterned wallpaper.  Original of course.  And I don’t mean their black metal informed cabaret jazz albums as Lugubrum Trio, but their aggressive material as well.  Their style is shambolic, and a bit whimsical.  A confident looseness that has an air of jazz, and the earthen folk played by the worn, soil tilling hands of their shared ancestors.  It also wouldn’t be Lugubrum without the absurd dry humor that is woven in.  Who they are as a band is represented by the incredibly fitting carrot and twig wreath of the album cover.

Opening the album, “Stinker of Stink 2” almost operates as their Seinfeld-esque theme song, which quickly seques to “Veteranus”, a solid track that showcases each element, instrument, and tempo summarizing the album in one track, but it’s not one of the standout tracks.  WHAT IS WITH THE FART NOISES! …Oh.  uh, yeah…the album is littered with palm to lips fart sounds.  I guess this first real track also serves to warn.  Anyway, pay no mind [awkward laugh] .  Moving on we find ourselves at a track like “Trail of the Tiger”.  An album highlight that cuts a 1973 paisley groove like a 19th century farm implement. With the abandon of a group of farmers four pints of trappist dubbel into their Friday night.  Now that I mention it, everything about Lugubrum is seemingly several Belgian strong ales deep in influence.  The song ends with the breakdown of a hearty, bare chested chant as the group settles themselves down. “Eu de Bolis” is a dirge of beauty.  Our farmer, in the midst of the rainy season, and a mild depression, succumbs to stir crazy. He turns to corn whiskey and a stringed instrument in fit where, at the 3:10 mark, the song dives headlong into the work bench.  Spitting blood and tobacco, cackling against the sound of shuddering thunder until collapsing into bed. A rinse and repeat cycle of isolation fueled mania.  On the far end of Lugubrum’s musical genetic code I swear you can detect a connection with Appalachian Americana-bluegrass captured in the Smithsonian Folkways series.  Surely, some distant grandparent of a member died on his eastern Kentucky porch with a banjo and jug long before any ethnomusicologist could immortalize their unwieldy pickings to wax cylinder.

Lugubrum contextual-ize black metal through their lens, in doing so, the music is embued with truth.  More “trve” than the average black metal band in eternal debt to the “old sound”.  Lugubrum is the mysterious, wooden box, covered in strangely comforting ancient symbols, discovered in the wall of a very old home…even for Belgium.  Authentically old in sound.  However, I’ve formed this perception of the band having heard all of their records.  Possibly, this album being one’s first exposure, that all would ring very true from the dusty, wood rot guitar tone.  Maybe from the production: warm like iron cemetery gates by the sun on the spring equinox.  Sure, horns, weird vocalizing, and the sound of releasing methane make their appearance, but since their earliest work, certainly compared to their previous 3 albums, Bruyne Kroon is their least artsy, most celebrating of its influences in the heavy metal that raised them: Dark Throne, Celtic Frost, and other regional obscurities I’m sure, are channeled into what, by title, is the spiritual twin of 2001 album Bruyne Troon. Ancient idols featured large carved phalluses in the dire appeal to the gods for fertility.  Lugubrum, in full honor of their heritage, respectively chuckle at the giant dicked hobbit god.

Doppelherz sounds like what I imagine their post rehearsal playlist might be.  Knocking back dark lager after a two hour rehearsal In the dim, moist cellar of a Swedish flower shop as the likes of mid period Satyricon, The Birthday Party, Cardinal’s Folly, Angel Witch, obscure 70s Dutch prog, and Blue Oyster Cult echo off of the cool, irregular fieldstone walls on into the evening while the band carries on important discussions such as what the best doom record is of each European country of each decade since 1980.

This is not to say the songs merely sound like an exhaustive list of ingredients of their myriad influences.  They’re quite deftly combined and baked to perfection recipe’s of these influences. Opener “Cocoon (Bitch Regalia)” burns at the altar of deranged 70s proto-metal rock riff deities.  Vintage blown tube guitar solos  compliment spring reverb throbbing vocal accents but by 2/3 through they break into a seamless black metal paced blitz.  I’d simply call it black & roll if it didn’t seem like too cheap of a qualifier.  Certainly when your album is in the same league with such masters of style as Negative Plane.  Maybe more specifically they perform a blackened doom & roll.   In this case, ‘doom’ being the candle lit dirge of early Pentagram, ‘roll’ the transcendent nether-blues riffing of Blue Oyster Cult, with ‘blackened’ shifts in the spirit of Bathory and Dark Throne. 

Peeking back at Reveal!’s catalog I realize I’m passingly familiar with their 2019 album Scissorgod.  I recall checking it out but not committing to a full listen.  To my ears it was a bit more challenging, finding the band exploring the more out there avenues of 80’s freaks of rock like Jesus Lizard if their aim was reinterpreting Bathory songs.  Where Jesus Lizard, and album Scissorgod, could be angular and staggering, Doppelherz hones in on the all important groove.  Something even Jesus Lizard found by Shot, their fourth album.   “Angels Bend” is the most perfect example of this chiseled groove. For Doppelherz, Reveal! drape occult rock, NWOBHM, and black metal like a leather and sheep wool cloak over the skeleton of Scissorgod and fit it with a detailed bronze helmet that features the Blue Oyster Cult logo.  At all times evoking the strangely familiar into highly effective churns of clang-tankerous, burnt offerings of blackened cabaret. 

Tone freaks will absolutely appreciate the dialed in, period legit depth of each instrument.  The production, like their style crossing, is a barely perceptible bridge between current capabilities of definition and the gritty pastel greens and browns like that of the interior of a mid-70’s European headshop. The undoubtedly well curated amping and guitar effects are emphasized in a way that puts you in the rehearsal space.  It recalls a remastered Tyranny & Mutation with beefed up frequencies across the board.  Remarkably, despite all the way back referencing of classic rock and doom, Reveal! don’t lean into any stoner or 70’s throwback tropes that often make me scoff.  They took these classic influences and interpreted them in an organically original way, backing up the nostalgia with that factor which is of utmost significance: god damn RIIIIIIIIFFS!

Going even further back to sample their first few releases it’s clear Reveal! have been apprenticing long and hard and Doppelherz is their induction as journeyman.  Having cut and crafted their long ship with new contours in search of the detailed refinement that yields the form of themselves that is most right. So tastefully fabricated of beloved worn influences into a newly constructed, spell enhanced vessel.  The thrill of hearing an album like this is, while it may inevitably be overlooked, I know this is going to light up the right listener and stay in their rotation.  It’s the type of album that inspires one to throw on the studded jean jacket, jump in the ‘88 brown Volvo and take a scenic cruise on Sweden’s E4 for a few spins of the record.

I scour the virtual depths from decaying cathedrals, basement dungeons, and abandoned warehouses hoping to find audio relics of unique minds.  Projects that bend the rules but don’t exactly break them. That twist the form into something of their own image without being over-wrought or try-hard.  One would think finding such examples within brutal death metal is more difficult to accomplish ,or encounter, than with other subgenres of metal.  Yet, over the past few years a frontier is being pressed in brutal death metal, where the dumb mingles with the technical, is being transmogrified into ghastly new shapes by a small force of bands.

Like sentient nano-bio weapons evolving themselves and encroaching on enemy territories past known space, these dangerous new lifeforms threaten fragile treaties of traditionalism.  Bands like Afterbirth, Edenic Past, and Defeated Sanity are enhancing this style not only technically, but also in ambiance.  An element almost completely unregarded in slam.  However, Laparotomy is distinctly pushing the boundaries of ambiance…inward.  In some abstract way Ascendancy… is the counter to Dripping’s basement dwelling, drug induced psychosis suggested by, Disintegration Thought Patterns of a Synthetic Mind Traveling Bliss from 20 years ago.  Ascendancy… instead, however, leans into the ideals of a modern generations utilize the latest in natural hallucinogenic substances as tools to unlock greater understanding and potential of oneself, in effort that, in a collective sense, the self improvement and explorations that come from such exploratory sessions can propagate cultural and scientific uplifting for the positive advancement of humankind.  Laparotomy does this but for, you know…brutal death metal.

From the first shower of synth keys over straight up ‘dummy thicc’ guitar slams it’s clear Laparotomy is one of those projects that will likely draw a stark line with ‘old heads’.  Molesting The Decapitated this is not.  In fact, the album’s gauzy, timepiece melting slam is neither silly, gory, nor particularly dark.  The feel of these songs brought to mind Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.  The animated masterpiece is a lesson about the runaway effects on nature by man.  In it, much of Earth is being overtaken by an extreme mutation of nature; possibly a freakish consequence of man’s genetic manipulations over time.  Both the cover art and the music paints a similarly alien world dominated by complex and extreme plant life, fungi, mold, and insects in a disorienting saturation of texture and color, in a haze of expelling spores and fumes, bathing the air in low level intoxicating potpourri, attracting humans and other beings to this exotic and unique center of mind-body ascendancy.  The figure on the cover seemingly having been completely enveloped by the surrounding environment.

All of these elements best coalesce in the album’s track 5 centerpiece, “Delicate Yet Jagged Refinement”. Dense, euphoric synths deliver pharmacological peace while competing with ominous yet deceptively soothing drop-tuned riffs of poisonous gas replacing the oxygen in your blood.  Gradually, changing from creme toned sking to neon purple, over several minutes, you begin to commune with the fungal-ONE, represented by the vocals of drummer Justin McNeil; like a giant radioactive tardigrade gurgling sickly from its single orifice. Pulsing within its glowing lair deep under the noxious, living forest.  The album excels at remaining in its own writing pocket yet provides plenty of outstanding points of confusion such as in track 7, “Engagement in Extinguishing Malevolence”, which begins with a down right chiming, slightly stoned riff that wouldn’t have been out of place on any later era Dinosaur Jr. albums!  Shortly, death vocals boldly come in on top.  This transitions to a more traditional and menacing slam part, coming back once more into the Dino Jr. riff, before the song progresses toward rapturous indecency of pummeling gravity blasting and glistening synth maximalism.  One is liable to feel dehydrated, mentally disassociated, and physically dislocated as the guitars lumber back into the sparkling haze, trailed by keyboard wafting briefly and to a close in the final transcendental come down of “Rejoicing in the Vanquishment”.

Wow… what the fuck was all of that!  To my ears it’s easily earned a place in what will likely be a top 5 record on my metal year end list.  An album like this is what inspires me to spend many patient hours briefly sampling a lot of new music and, frankly, the real benefit of social media: that once in a while album that somehow seems custom made to fit your own finely sculpted taste.  Sometimes fulfilling a niche you never knew you were missing.  Laparotomy often enough lean into expected death metal blasting charge.  There is plenty for the brutal maniacs to enjoy, but it’s the measured, pulsating, almost hypnotic quality of much of the record that gives it character and charm.  Now, grooving as it can be, nobody is exactly moshing to Laparotomy’s narcotic elixir of progressive slam. It’s more of a hovering 5 feet off the ground, eyes rolled back, glowing purple -experience.

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the often reductive genre of slam and crude brutal death metal, but like Disentomb, Afterbirth, or Edenic Past, Ascendancy Through Hypnagogic Thought Process is, and should make for, a stark exception of simultaneously moving, extrasensory ambiance and patiently executed riff macerations.

A rewarding trivia, when it comes to genres of music that become decentralized from their origin, eventually being represented throughout the world, is the geo-cultural specific micro variants that spawn and their unique differences, sometimes rather difficult to put one’s finger on.  A mystical brewing of production, chord progressions, tone, song writing, art, and harder-to-identify effects of style, can differentiate one city, region, or country from another. So then, what gives Greek black metal it’s metaphorical fingerprint?

Even as a novice of this style when I sampled a few tracks it was immediately noticeable.  Something about their Greek origin lends the sound a sense of authentic antiquity.  Greek production always sounds as if what you’re hearing was recorded in a limestone building, of a great age, turned studio.  From the outside, a weathered and long disused structure.  The rest which is hidden beneath a few meters of earth.  Traveling back more than 2,000 years the site is a temple and library containing artifacts that would fill a few gaps in modern contextual understanding of ancient Greek life. Greece at the time is the dominating culture of the Mediterranean, Lavant, and has a hold in Egypt.  Between them, a fascinating exchange of pre-Christian cultures representative in the painting used for the cover.  “A Christian Dirce” by Henryk Siemiradzki depicts Dirce, Queen of Thebes, being put to death.  Her body, tied to the horns and neck of a bull that kills her in its attempt to remove the burden from it’s crown. The precise synth string stabs introducing “Ceremonies Before Lights Existence” fitting for such a creatively violent spectacle.  Building into a definitively Greek style attack of riled programmed drums, dry serpentine guitar arrangement, pompous synth, and sand blasted straining of the throat.  High drama echoing up the stone auditorium collides with seething barbarism of foreign mercenaries.

This is also a time when gods played humanity like chess, for leisure.  From High society to common slave class, magic had a place.  The continuity of Greek cultural influence into modern times is singular.  Perhaps the most ancient with direct relevance today.  You hear this in Greek black metal.  That same through line to antiquity gives it a uniquely weathered sound.  Snare like nearby chiseling upon fresh stone columns.  Kick drum like thuds against dusty, taught goatskin.  Vocals that of a slave leading his fellows in offerings to a blended pantheon of gods and spirits under cover of night.  The whistle of winds driven off the Ionian Sea masking their congregation.  Fueled by resentment, against futility, offerings are made by the group in exchange for great hopes: the wellbeing of children not seen since being traded away, for the bloody end of traitors near, appeals for the healing of ripped heels, and lash marks. The riffs are as craggy and rugged as the rising landscape.  Weary as the gathered worshippers.  Momentary acoustic passages build like fire snarling in the dry salt air.  Melo-dramatic synth swells signify the presence of lower gods and djinn attracted by their call.

There’s an epic campiness to Zaratus’ music, and Greek black metal at large, which I think is naturally conflated due to the prominent, high arching synth and guitar melodies.  Although filled with synthetic instrumentation it misses any sword and sandal like corniness.  The group propels it’s melodramatic setting into something like that of an early 2000’s period film, closer to an underfunded Kingdom of Heaven would-be sequel in it’s production, than the overtly comic book exaggeration of CG box office hit 300.  Because, in fact, historical reality was both more incredible and terrible than fiction, once you dive into it.  As a follow up to ep The Descent the style is no different, but the production is wide screen, if you will.

At 48 minutes, the album is a bit long for my taste, but expected with historical epics.  However, where other albums feel like they drag on this album at least feels like it’s a complete musical arch with a well wrapped and exciting end in “Zoroastrian Priests”.  Arpeggio piano, and plinck-ed string accents spiral upward like fumes of burning acacia bush rising, encircled by robbed and painted priests, before finally lilting in the exhaustion of it’s frenzied appeal to the gods.  In the Days of Whore isn’t war metal, though it captures this sense of turn-of-the-first-millenium turmoil occurring throughout the exotic eastern Mediterranean.  Zaratus created an admirable record that successfully evokes  a time where human advancement gave way to great glory, and mystique but also great pain, and chaos.

“Krallice goes Disgorge (US)”………….

“That’s it?”

“That’s the pitch.”

“Isn’t that just Gorguts?  They share a member”

“…No…  Gentlemen, women, and non-human friends present, if you’ll fit your VR headsets on, I’ll explain this incredible breakthrough in today’s presentation.

Gorguts recent output is yes, cosmically wondrous, but more so rooted in European classical music.  Like the Kepler Space Telescope, later-era Gorguts is impressive engineering.  Exploring the edges of outer space, but ultimately rooted in Earthly constructs.  Red Amarcord is an abysmal union between the labyrinthine, otherworldly orchestrations of Krallice, and relentless, planet-harvesting onslaught that is Disgorge’s Consume The Forsaken.  Those demonic beings featured on the cover are merely drones controlled by greater forces of intelligence for which Edenic Pasts’s contorting music serves as a decrypted message to mankind translating roughly to:

“Human fear is a source of energy needed to power our space-faring vessels in another dimension.  There is no alternative.  Soon.”

A truly disturbing message to us all.

I’ve eluded to the members but let’s do a proper roll call.  They who have computed the forbidden. Necessary to bring forth an album of space time-flickering, down-tuned horror:  As I understand it, Edenic Past is the spawn of bass player and Krallice member Nicholas McMaster.  Naturally, Krallice bandmate, Gorguts bass player, and hermit proprietor of Menegroth The Thousand Caves Recording Studios, Colin Marsten, commits guitar.  No simple 6 string affair you can be certain. Lastly, the guttural vocal putrefaction is performed by none other than P2 Loggia label boss, Paulo Paguntalon.  Paulo is otherwise known from the 00’s decidedly un-PC ping death metal frontiersman Copremesis, free jazz-influenced death metal Encenathrakh, and many others.  Paulo is also a recurring resident ping death metal scholar on HeavyHole podcast.  There really isn’t a more legitimate cast of boundary-less, underground figures.

[Here it is suggested the reader locate and begin playing the album. Allowing a few minutes to let it translate before continuing]

Do not confuse what you hear as being guitar, and bass riffs.  They are in fact the dense murmur-ation of thousands of undulating alien spirits groaning in a complex sequence.   Either in anguish or wailing in hideous anticipation?  The sound of which echoes through the halls of a 10,000 year old vessel drifting in the nothing of space after a bizarre transportation to our dingy, back alley of a solar system.  The vessel: produced by means more observably akin to black arts than science.  Appearing opaque, cloudy obsidian to human eyes. Enveloped in the darkest mist, like vanta black mixed with scarlet red, swirling about its shifting form.  Our findings reveal that certain beings aboard the vessel in fact are using McMaster and Marston to channel their layered, telepathic language; incomprehensible to humans unable to perceive the inverted cosmic structure of dimensions both near enough for some to sense, yet only provable using mathematics that would cause illness in those that attempt to study it.  Unfortunate results are typically vomiting and loss of consciousness, however, the unique minds of the men involved means they’re each uniquely suited to decipher the alien thought-form.  Composing it into sensory overloading death metal.  The nearest form of expression we can hope to understand.

Red Amarcord in feel is parallel to the grand, synthetic dread of dark ambient more so than any death metal record.  Pull up the latest Cryo Chamber records release, or Source Direct drum & bass single, and compare. Warm, but only like that of steam rising from sewer caps during an 11pm November rain on the streets of Neuromancer’s Chiba Japan.  The bass on this album is a vindication for every death metal record with sub-audible bass presence.  When death metal bass is given it’s due in the mix it only enhances the experience.  End of discussion.  Here it receives equal life in the mix as the guitar. Every bit as sonically and compositionally important as the guitar. The combined tone of their instruments reminiscent of a four-fingered percussive strike upon prepared piano strings; A pleasing dissonance.  Nimble fingers spin a beautiful chaos of crashing transitions between Cecil Taylor-like fret runs and slam parts that sound like an iron maiden being repeatedly opened and shut.  The interplay is purposeful and complimentary as if it all were a ballet choreographed by harsh noise obsessive, The Rita. 

The drums.  I was hoping to reel readers in before informing that the drums are programmed.  Should some find programmed drums cause for dismissal.  If thats the case I intensely urge that this prejudice be set aside and the record given at least a single real listen.  Particularly because these are the most finely composed DAW based drums I’ve ever heard.  It’s not so incredibly shocking considering the sophistication of today’s production tools and the quality of attainable samples.  The drumming in death metal is more dynamic than black metal or grind, where programmed drums are more commonly employed, which risks making for awkward, or monotonous rigidity of rhythm not typically heard in the genre. This is not an issue on Red Amarcord.  Here the drums are quite meticulously arranged and thus more convincingly organic.  Which they would have to be with the unreal frequency of time signature changes, stops, and turn-on-dime shifts that occur.  Per the credits, Marston managed taking the fundamental drum tracks created by McMasters and sound engineered them to be as natural as have ever been presented in metal.  Very impressive are the parts when ping snare gravity blasting appears.  Generally, at such speeds when programmed, the snare tends to sound like a DJ Tron gabber record. These details alone speak volumes to Marston’s and McMasters patience for detail and dedication to concept.

Edenic Past have created an indisputably unique record, but it is entirely rare that brutal death metal features passages that can be described as beautiful.  Taking into consideration an audience whose sense for beauty tracks toward the deeply mangled, and grotesque.  Were you in a space suit, low on oxygen, knowingly in the gravitational grip of a black hole, demise imminent.  Would you not absorb the cosmically spiritual spectacle of your surroundings?   Impossibly old stars, smeared purple gas clouds, countless sparkling galaxy’s, transmitting through the millions of cones of your eyes to the brain; a humbling awe.  That is the existential, larger than one’s self, sense of beauty I refer to. The specific passage being the final 57 seconds of the masterpiece “Politkovskaya”.  Marston’s guitar is a chorus, and perhaps octave shifted drenched DMT journey through a cube of jagged beings where McMasters’ bass, chugging in jerks and fits, represents their secret work spinning the fabric of our universe. Paulo’s vocals, a boiling vat of tar, vacillate between long quivering pyroclastic spew and The Predator’s antagonizing throat rattle. At it’s climax a sudden, cruel return to our reality when the song ceases after an incredulous 2:36.

Red Amarcord is smart, not because of it’s expert-level technical chops, as is the case when brutal death metal is typically considered smart, but that McMasters puts himself into the album.  The song titles infer the songs inspiration as an avid consumer of higher literature, world affairs particular to his ethnic lineage, and music.  The humorously titled, “Chuck Schuldiner” is an analogue to the late metal prodigy’s progressive death metal consideration of philosophy. Acknowledging the beauty, vileness, and terrifying insignificance of human experience into the compositional deformity of death metal.  Album stand out, “Politkovskaya”, is inspired by Russian journalist and writer Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya.  A thorn in the side of communism and the eventual totalitarian regime of Putin she was assassinated in 2006 after what was likely a long career under constant threat. “Molotov” and “Kolmya” are references to the Stalinist purges of intellectuals disagreeing with his regime. Buyers of the cd will find liner notes on each songs inspiration.

In a way I’m glad this review wasn’t completed and published later than intended.  Rather quickly does the torrent river of metal releases move.  Even at the time of release, it seemed that each member had dropped a half dozen projects between them, immediately overshadowing Edenic Past.  Particularly the Miasmatic Necrosis record, cool as it is to see goregrind enjoying a bit of a renaissance.  I can only hope this then inspires a few to rewind and investigate.  A killer metal record might excite my adrenal core and get my blood pumping, but there are parts on Red Amarcord that affect me in a way some of my favorite, to be genre-agnostic, emotionally charged albums do.  Red Amarcord is a sonic proclamation of what extreme metal can be capable of.  Brutal, detailed, and personal.  Like a math-magical black hole there are points so dense it repels you while simultaneously pulling you in with equal force.  Finally, introverts whose art book collection rivals their New York Death Metal collection have an album just for them.

For a band with a style that oozes familiarity does this soon to be released album push as far into the terrifying cosmos as the cover might suggest?  No, not really.  Is that perfectly fine?  Yes, very much fine.  Of all musical dynamics, the production is most noticeably advanced.  Overall fans will be glad to hear no heaviness was compromised in the progression of this band’s sound.

In the Eyes of Nothing is notably heftier than 2017’s Severed Monolith which definitely had more of the famous chainsaw guitar tone as mimicked by OSDM reenactors like Entrails, but given a modern crunch and which had an overall compression that narrowed it’s sonic field.  Here we have a high quality depth and warmth overall.  If Gorephilia are a musically analog to the cell-harvesting alien of John Carpenter’s The Thing when it escapes back into the base station.  No longer confined to the shed but now has the space to absorb, and grow into it’s horrific maximum potential.

Gorephilia play it smart starting the album with an immediate catchy banger in “Walls of Weeping Eyes”.  That initial riff is why we all love death metal to begin with.  Nothing matches a menacing, infectious riff from huge heaving guitars.  The energy remains quite high through “Ouroboran Labyrinth” until death-doom dedication of track 4, “Devotion upon the Worm” which snakes and winds at 80bpm like slow motion footage of a sandworm rhythmically swimming through the sand sea of Arrakis.  Again, smartly sequenced, track 5 “Consensus” is a 1:30 interlude.  Nothing crazy beyond screeching drone and modulating string bending but it functions to reset the listener’s attention for act two.  “Simplicity of Decay” follows and does an admirable Morbid Angel impression with some focused M.C. Escher solos.  “Not for the Weak” is maybe the tamest song that grooves and chugs unceremoniously.  Not as smartly placed “Death Dream” is a short reverbed guitar and bass interlude that links to final song “Ark of the Undecipherable”.  Frankly, a rather ho-hum end that rather than serving as an exclamation of a climatic journey in fact highlighted that that album arch is mostly a long decay, sustain, and then sudden release.

Fans of the band are aware that vocalist Nemesis sent himself to the realms beyond in 2018 which I can only imagine emotionally disturbed the other guys and lead to a logistic shake up leading to guitarist Jukko Aho to step forward on vocals.  Brilliantly, Jukko’s style is quite close in execution to Nemesis. Personally, Nemesis’ vocals were a key attraction for me as a fan of uncompromisingly low, unintelligible, death bellows.  While Jukko gets goddamn close, and really do sound great, they aren’t Mariana’s Trench depth so for me a bit of the band’s charm left with Nemesis.   Comparatively, Severed Monolith had an exciting, difficult to contain live wire nature between the unwieldy solos and adrenalin cranked drumming that made the plodding atmospheric parts most welcome.

In the Eye of Nothing is a deserving entry into their discography but, while it does contains some of the bands most immediately memorable riffs and biggest sound, there is a notable energy missing.

That is precisely the scenario I imagined within minutes of my initial listen of introductory track “Potencee d’Or”.  The effect of Initiatio’s reality warping vapors was so strong that I instantly longed for this obsessive hobby of fantasy roll-play gaming and a group of like-minded friends that never existed.  Ysengrin is a project that explores the mystical, opium dens of an ancient time on an Earth not quite our own. Using black, occult metal to power the gate between them.  Very much the singular vision and most of the instrumentation, of one Guido Saint Roch.  In the course of the past twelve years, Guido has prepared more albums and releases than I expected existed.  Comprising four full-length albums and half-dozen splits with Sartegos, Stargazer, and others.  I had seen the name around but just didn’t pay much attention before a few weeks ago when the album’s cover demanded my attention; a lone cloaked figure, among ruins surrounded by mountain peaks, conjuring some evocative energy.  It looks like a painting torn right out of a tabletop game guidebook.

The overall production in fact sounds like instruments are reflecting off of the thinly coated, 18” deep fieldstone walls of a suburban basement, forming a very distinct, open room, shallow, reverb tuned to a frequency that functionally lowers the veil between our world and another. That other world being a 90’s cd-rom fantasy role-playing game.  The cover art may scream, “I am a great wizard and the realm is in dire trouble, follow me young apprentice into peril and mythical adventure”.  Which sounds exhaustingly saturated in gimmick.  Perhaps of something that has a few too many long passages of flute and hand drum, but it is in no way a cousin to hyper self-aware novelty like Alestorm.  Nor is it the stuffy, Oxford University English graduate fantasy metal of Caladan Brood.  No, musically it’s in in the same magic school with the likes of Mortuary Drape, Negative Plane, and Howls Of Ebb.  If largely in spirit.  The band’s self-proclaimed ‘hermetic’ occult metal is played with a sincerity that creates an engrossing, world building experience that has it’s own unique laws of physics pulling the listener out of ones existence for forty three minutes and eleven seconds. I liken it to the same effect that Dark Crystal had the first time I saw it as a child.  The type of art that can’t help but jump start the imagination of the experiencer.

A singular example that amplifies the bands save-the-realm vibe is track 5, “Ode a l’Escarboucle”.  The fuzzy, open, warm throb of the bass sound is enough to stoke memory of the low budget, yet whip smart and visually gauzy haze of cult classic film Time Bandits. According to an interview of Guido conducted by Bardo Mythology, since after the Sartegos split bass alone has become the main stringed instrument.  The riff of this song opens with an eerie caution.  The beginning of the song is entirely reminiscent of the Twin Peaks theme in vibe. Alternating between a fuzz + chorus effected riff and a golden warm, open, moody throb before reaching 2:30 where the sound transition to what you hear across most of the album: straight up classic European heavy metal riffing.  A steady whole note, no frills chugging and righteous guitar lead guides the players to keep you on the predestined path.  The vocals are a lower register, phlegmy, blackened cave growl.  Occasionally a higher rasp comes in for back up.  Hovering, ghoulish keys often appear like the apparitions of elders always monitoring from beyond.  The drums are open and natural.  The snare ring echoes off a nearby waterfall.  Tom fills sound like tumbling rocks down an embankment leading to the pool below.  Elsewhere the music actually breaks into a quick, more recognizably black metal clip signaling that perhaps the tabletop adventure our gang is on may not merely be an extension of their imagination.  Each part and chosen instrument is made with purpose like the long form strategy of RPG gaming. The song arrangements very much feel like they are written to match the moment to moment of an album length narrative arch.

There is so much to love about this Ysengrin record.  I believe the project has achieved a peak in writing and execution that is strong enough to create it’s own alternate dimension with which it alone exists.  The impressive part isn’t the 3D rendered hi-def graphics and non-stop action.  Like most successful and heralded works of creativity it’s the characters, attention to detail, and perfect ratio of a seemingly massive world to explore to the forever unknowable.  Hit start, or if you’re willing to pay exorbitant international shipping on vinyl, drop the needle.  Next thing you know it’s 6am, Initiatio has played 18 times over, and you’re about to battle a daemonmeister on a castle tower overlooking a purple magma lake. You thought you were wielding a powerful black magic bone keytar, standing before a gleaming fortress of blue obsidian glass.  However, it’s just your old food crumb jammed gaming keyboard and a blinding 32” flat screen monitor.  Initiatio has a hold on you.08/25/2020

The guitars sound like bridge cables being tension set.  Creaking steel strands being cranked and unwound from a large flatbed mounted reel. The playing technique employed sounds more like hammering and scraping of the strings than picking.  Per the promo bio drumming duties are split between the direct relation to Imperial Triumphant, drummer Kenny Grohowski, also of Secret Chiefs 3, and Alex Cohen, previously of chaos metal weirdos Pyrrhon. They do have different styles but the effect is largely the same due to the unique drum production choice.

The drums overall sound very mechanical but not lifeless in the way, say, digitally replaced hits do, but in the classic sense of machines that are comprised of meticulous, artfully designed components created from busy, layered hand drawn schematics, and assembled carefully by skilled workers. In this way, the kick drum most audibly sounds like a writer aggressively typing his own obituary on a well-maintained 1940’s Rheinemetall typewriter during a manic episode of 1am inspiration.

Interestingly enough, Thoren’s Bandcamp page claims a geographic location of Sterling Heights, Michigan.  A suburb of thee Motor City, Detroit.  Although we know it today as a specter of what that moniker once defined, it seems Thoren has been busy picking the automobile manufacturing graveyards clean to tinker purposefully on their aural metal sculpture.  After much heating, bending, riveting, and welding the result is a newly refined enhancement from Gwarth I to Gwarth II.  Subtle, but most notably, the production has been ground and polished.  Gwarth I was slightly more flat overall.  The guitar gain spread out wider.  Less tightly wound and wirey than Gwarth II. 

A very important compliment to the band is that, while I’m sure they have a fine sense for the very niche audience this music appeals to, they also know it’s 1. Instrumental, 2. Rather tonally dissonant, and 3. It’s the future and “ain’t nobody got time for that”.  Only 3 of 10 tracks break three minutes!  Yes followed by Yes.  Brevity is vital to listener impact.  More full on blasts such as “Vex” is appropriately contained to 1:41.   Longest track “Thaw Gur” has enough dynamic shifts to warrant the run time.  A few sections even settle on a more recognizably black metal run that breaks up the mad chamber skronk.  The sequencing is so very thoughtful in how the album winds down from tracks 8-10.  Where track 8 “Lithui” is a short, pensive, acoustic jazz exercise buffering track 9 “Suith”, the albums final aggressive number.  Which itself deftly deconstructs into spare puttering that functionally transitions to track 10 “Firen”, which is practically a continuation of “Lithui”.  The album is high minded yet still serves the listener by not being overbearing.

When reviewing albums, It’s always my goal not to use “ffo” comparisons to a list of other like bands, but through the descriptive writing to, if it’s strong enough, cause the reader’s mind to imagine what the music sounds like without having heard it before. Of course I mentioned already that members are in other freaky, fringe bands of note which gets you most of the way already.  However, while listening I could not help but to hear traces of a fellow contemporary non-traditional metal project Botanist.  There’s a parallel between the dulcimer of Botanist and how the combined guitar and drums on Gwarth II make me think of piano strings being hammered and simultaneously bowed into painful rapture.  The next free evening you have I recommend to pour yourself a glass of dry as Alaskan winter Pinot noir, put on the film Pi, muted in the background, play Gwarth II, and maybe start working on that effect pedal kit that’s been sitting on your kitchen table for a year.

What does Impure uniquely offer that might appease the curmudgeonly, heard-it-all demo(n)graphic that frequent the Nuclear War Now message board?  To start (and this may cause more than a few well-worn, leather jacketed arms to cross)…Impure’s version has a vaguely modern clarity of mix.  Emphasis on the use of ‘clear’, not ‘clean’.  Mind you, this is in comparison to that of the aforementioned bands. In the way that the antichrist figure is often presented in literature and film: Sharp in a custom all black suit, hypnotic charm, and a centuries old wine collection, but still a fully active participant in huge sex magic rituals that always leave blood stained leather gloves, and at least one virgin dead (Nasty. The same ones from the last sex magic orgy.  Satan has no regard.).  Don’t get it confused. It is still 100% mausoleum echoing metal of death, just with a dark sophistication.

If you just take a few minutes to listen to track one, “Death Secretion”, you will KNOW what else Impure has to offer. [Waits 3:03]. It’s the element that is thee fundamental core of metal music: dangerous, god defiling riffs!  You aren’t so bummed on the ‘clearly defined mix’ -thing after all.  Satan’s Eclipse has a generously wide-open low end, which insulates the mid-low range guitar riffs like a yak skin cloak.  The drumming is a steady pounding with two modes: Simple doomy thudding and angry-drunk muscled near blasting. Setting pace for leagues of damned souls rowing the decaying ships, to which they are eternally shacked, down the river Styx.  Giving the corrupted, chamber-echoing verses their anchor through the album.

In the demon dimension, this style could be termed ‘Satan beat’; Metal of death that sounds like it might’ve been produced by the late Joe Meek.  A producer of cult fame whose life reflected the wildest pulp novels of the time.  Had he lived, would have probably made fast friends with a guy like Dark Throne’s Fenriz.  However, he would’ve appreciated their recent output more than the scene approved classics. Meek dosed swinging 60’s pop with gin and Quaaludes; bee swarm guitars, maximum spring reverb, and for the time, drumming to match the accelerating heartbeat, soaked in the devil’s cocktail. In cult metal, the term may bring to mind Negative Planes singular Stained Glass Revelations.  Although they never reach that level of tiki totem entrancement, a song like “Sapphic Initiation” has just enough surf-demento reverb on the guitar (and everything else really) to induce the same sinister smile as that of ‘evil’ version Bill S. Preston Esquire.  It’s fun to be evil sometimes.

The following is a list of recommended activities while listening to Satan’s Eclipse: 

• Aggressively baptize babies in red wine, pledging their souls to Nyarlathotep
• Drink mead alone in a lava rock sauna
• Secretly study esoteric Gnostic manuscripts in a vault beneath the Vatican Library, then fighting dozens of martial arts trained Archbishop clones to reach the surface
• Listen to Blood On The Alter and Satan’s Eclipse at the same time. Get crazy.  Maybe it conjures a nether-portal in your beer stein.

Any reader knows that this style of death metal is INTENSELY well worn.  Tinkered with and sharply refined by 2018.  As sharp as one can make a 10^th century war hammer, anyhow.  Like all well beaten genres it takes ever more miniscule unique flares and, in my theory, youthful vigor for a band to stick out from the bloody sea of nearly identical bands.  Not since Fatalist‘s The Bitter End have I heard such a flesh shredding record in the classic flavor of death metal.  Perhaps because I’m not a regular down that corridor of the death metal catacombs.  However, when I do check out such bands I seem to gravitate to the take on it that both Pyre and Fatalist offer: relentless metallic crust, bordering on Scandinavian hardcore, parts punctuated by unhinged metal with a capital ‘M’, guitar solo’s.  I recommend the second solo in opening rampage ‘Merciless Death’, and steel beam melting string manipulation at the end of ‘Last Nail In Your Coffin’.  Pyre plays like a rabid soccer hooligan on krokadil.  Even when they do simmer into a groove or mid-paced break I sense the anxiety that everybody is twitching to explode into speed picking and fervent drum battering.

The production on Human Hecatomb meets every check mark for what it is but it’s the small differences that prick up.  The guitar’s aren’t an HM-2 buzzsaw, but more of a mining drill.  They have a more robust midrange tone and fuller in presence.  If anything on this album could be compared to a buzzsaw it’s the melodic yet unhinged solo’s throughout.  They spool up at incredible rpm’s and then, like a d.i.y. home improvement gone Rescue 911 moment, the blade dismounts becoming a limb threatening, air-sheering projectile ricocheting off thrashing d-beats and fervent rhythm guitar picking. The drums I could see people thinking sound a bit odd but I like the dead thudding.  It articulates each hit of a fast fill and gives the record kind of an elastic, punchy center.  Commonly difficult to separate in metal mixes, surely the bass is in part responsible for the additional heft. Itself less a razor wire like ‘thong’ tone and more concussive rumble. The vocals are a lacerated and urgent strain for everyone to kiss the god damn dirt or end up sans arms and legs like the Knight of NI!

Pyre‘s Human Hecatomb is in fact a reissue…barely.  Originally released in 2014, like the recent countrymates Wombripper,  Redifining Darkness  Records sought fit to give the Russian brutes a second chance amidst, what was even more so just four years, a quicksand pit of Swe-death, and old school death metal records; reissues of the long lost, of the classics, new offerings of the reformed, and those of a new generation pumping fresh formaldehyde into an old corpse.  Pyre definitely accomplish that, to the extend that the chest seams are bulging and the corpse is seeming to be coming back to life. Redefining Darkness is probably right to reissue this.  Fans of this sub-style will consider it a find.  Call it what you will, ‘second wave’, or what I already have, but don’t label it ‘trend’.  The founding templates of death metal aren’t a comeback sound when you consider Bloodbath released Resurection Through Carnage in 2002, or Entrails stuffed their guts back in the ole’ stomach cavity in 2010.  ‘Old school’ death metal will always be around,  just keep an ear out for the young and dangerous that execute it proper.

Personally, the Lord Of The Ring theme won’t perk my interest.  At least not alone.  Dush agh Golnauk came up some afternoon where I just let Youtube’s algorithm have at it (Sometimes you just have to live and let Sauron, am I right).  Naturally, when you do that, Sauron inevitably plays a bunch of ludicrously overstuffed epic black metal.  Most of which is produced in worship to his own fantastical malevolence (quite narcisstic, Sauron).  None the less, at some point my attention was alerted for what seemed an interesting reason to me: Keys of Orthanc pulled back the dragon’s reins on their songs.  In the way that a good soundtrack stirs a viewer’s reaction and enhances a scene, but doesn’t distract from it. Instead of a bombastic glut of layered audio tracks all pushing, pulling, and wowing the listener through symphonic exhaustion, Keys of Orthanc’s music unfolds in measured reveals of detail the way world building does in the best of fantasy literature.  All of the touchstones one expects of this brand of black metal is there but played more so in the pocket, making for a flowing album where the listener might suddenly find themselves whisked into the arch of.

The restraint, whether the band consciously writes with that intent or it’s a natural outcome, does them nothing but favors.  Turns out it’s not a matter of consciousness, however.  Just that they’re from Quebec Canada.  The French heritage is certainly a factor.  Separated by a vast ocean, and 150 years since under French authority, the connection is unbroken.  Black metal from this province always has a subtleness.  No matter how necro or bleak the band goes for there is an unmistakable air of sophistication, or ‘refined arrogance’, if you will.  The interplay between synth melodies and guitar riffs tasteful and fluid.  Rolling passages of anticipation release cause an emotional entanglement like that of two dragons free falling, twisted in struggle, mutually releasing each other moments before earthly impact, then fleeing to regain strength but ultimately returning to continue the fight in cycles.  Their respective riders on the ground waging a simultaneous battle of concentrated magic.  Keys of Orthanc do the job of pulling you into the drama classic stakes of good versus evil.  Credit in part goes to their pacing from the ominous but pleasant fantasy-synth intro of “Satum”, the beautiful yet dangerous allure of “Ringwraiths”, and through to grand finale “The White Wizard”.

The album features various valleys and peaks but all of them seem to serve the story which gives the whole album a sense of purpose, or utility.  For instance, “Ringwraiths”, and following track “Witchking” feature awesomely campy, otherworldly vocal additions that must serve to mark a certain place in the story.  “Mor Gashnum” begins with melancholy distorted guitar utterances before a sudden all-in mid-paced dirge.  I imagine the whole Gandalf squad hiking intently through the highlands into winding mountain side paths; the final push to destiny.  “The White Wizard” begins a with bright, majestic guitar riff and cymbal accents that move to a darker storm front as the song really starts, double kick plodding with greater urgency and an alternating mid-paced to half speed part builds tension before starkly breaking form into a full black metal blast.  At 4:14 soaring synth lines steal the show as the story lunges into epic conflict at the site of the monolithic Orthanc fortification.  Truly a Dolby 7.1 surround sound section of the album.

Rather suddenly the battle resolves and the “Outro” emerges as minor variation of intro “Satum”.  Credits figuratively begin to slowly scroll in the mind’s projector but, processing the emotive peak I just went through, I’ll be sticking around until the production company’s logo appears and lights slowly come up.  Dush agh Golnauk makes for excellent popcorn fare as Keys of Orthanc condense what would be a 3 hour film into a neat 35 minute album.

Agonal Breathing are made up of two guys that likely connected online and certainly over a fair distance.  Brandon Smith from Kansas provides sick vocals that sound like a juicy blood gushing neck slit run through a phase shifter pedal, unwavering in delivery as they may be.  Luis Flores executes all instruments from a currently chaotic Venezuela. These one or two man bands aren’t totally rare in this genre but always admirable.  You really have to want it when you take on three instruments, and the recording process.  Now, some of these guys are genetically engineered musical freaks and display immense skill on both guitar and drums but generally with expanded responsibilities comes a compromise in proficiency.  Based on the level of musicianship I’m hearing this is the case with Agonal Breathing.  Brutal death metal that sounds like alien technology verging on wizard magic is not the aim on Pure Agony, but nor is it sloppy or amateurish.  There are few frills and operates with about as much musical range as you would find in a two piece kazoo band.  However, this also means it is void of any silly ‘core’ elements that you hear on records that have band photos where each dude has a flat brimmed hat and too many face piercings (I suppose if you follow this stuff you know what I mean) which is ironic considering the album ends with an unnecessary Epicardiectomy cover.  Like much of the what the album is for me, it’s done just right when you take it as a whole.  As near to playing the pocket as a brutal death metal band could.

The guitar playing is why I would venture to figure that Luis is a drummer first.  There is chugging, groove, and rhythmic bends accenting the end of a phrase exactly where one would expect.  There’s a workman like quality to it, like blacksmith-ing a crowbar.  What they get right is dead on what I search for in absurdly brutal death metal.  The mixing is stellar for this style.  There is so often some bizarre tone or imbalance with brutal death metal albums.  Almost as if the producer dialed it all in just to accidentally drastically shift some channel setting before handing over the raw tracks.  You know; the guitar sounds like the same take has been layered three tracks deep with a plastic bucket filter cranked in Pro Tools.  Or the kick drum sounds not like acoustic drums but two amplified empty milk jugs. Nope, not an issue here.  The guitar is down-tuned and thick with aural dimension that any brutal band should be striving for yet so often end up with under-cooked results.  I know there are many an internet form thread topic of cool dudes arguing about the high tuned snare sound as heard here.  I say nay! It’s just another factor in this genre that I count as a unique positive.  Blasting is a huge reason I love extreme metal and do cosign the hell out of a cutting and aggressive snare sound <ping-ping-ping-ping-ping>, deal with it!

You readers might be wondering why I’m not detailing song highlights and other earworm-y parts.  Well, there aren’t any really.  Which isn’t a slam on the band (pause…) in my view.  A record like this just needs to be considered within the context of it’s genre and not necessarily as to whether or not it is the greatest metal album of the millennium compared to historical classics.  It’s not as if these bands even strive for that level of recognition and it’s an expectation that sets you up for consistent disappointment as an appreciator. What Pure Agony does do is hit my disturbing pleasure buttons especially as a production snob.  I recognize that to many these band’s a comical aside but where the need arises Pure Agony delivers on the marketing jargon about being a crushing, gore-tastic, serious slam-a-thon of ULTRA brutal death metal.  Put that on the CD sticker if it isn’t already.

The song titles alone should be enough to get people to click; “Don’t Fear The Reefer”, “Jesus Is My Co-pilot…And We’re Cruisin’ For Pussy”, or the unofficial sequel, “Jesus Loves You…Everybody Else Thinks You’re An Asshole”; Solid chuckles every time.  Satan’s Dealer drop ten songs to soundtrack hot boxed, aimless night drives in the ’97 Crown Vic that is three different colors and, miraculously, the most reliable car you’ve ever had.  These songs are for HIGH octane (duh, pun intended) good times and laughs are plenty.  On their hail to the dirty deed, “Keepin It Nasty” guitarist and singer Jim Powell shifts to a high register on the “Scream” of featured chorus lyric “Ooh baby gonna make you SCREAM” is one of those parts of a song that will have everybody in the car waiting for and then simultaneously giving their best high note.  They make a detour from drugs and women on “Nomad” which tells the story of many a metalhead’s true personal savior, Mad Max.  Actually, listening to this album and playing a Mad Max drinking game would make for a great weeknight activity.  Do try this at home.

The music itself, as is indicative of what I feel to be common of many Midwestern bands, never gets in its own way.  It’s workman like in straight forward effectiveness highlighted further that this is a two-piece.  Getting the most out of the least; Going out to the garage and making the tools from whatever’s on hand as opposed to buying it.  Although in this case it’s piles of cd’s with scratch marks on the cases from cutting dope and the dusty equipment within a beer can throw of the couch.  The production is worn, but not thin.  The guitar is balanced between requisitely heavy yet allows enough tone for the grooves and riffs to strike the ear. Drummer Neil Pesch smoothly transitions from the doped up and crushing to boogie rock overdrive as each song calls for.  Even if this was recorded digitally I could be convinced it’s 8-track analog; Saturated but not overblown, nor fussed over and pristine.  The logo and cover art are also convincingly vintage looking.

To be more directly comparative, Satan’s Dealer is the drunk-driving fender bender between Eyehategod and …Girlschool. “Sister Fucker pt.1” and “C’mon Lets Go” combined for a mystery pill and mostly-vodka screw driver kinda night.  Truly something for every maniac in the group, Dealer Of The Gods turns a little dark subject matter into a ‘fun romp’.  “Sold It For Drugs” chronicles the unfortunate acts fueled by spiraling addiction, which might strike a little too close to home for some listeners.  But, if you’re going to in fact ‘sell it all for drugs’, save a few bucks and at least buy the download you degenerate scum.  Flush your life down the toilet with a fist in the air.

ALBUM SCORE: 666+420 = 1086

Proscrito play sludge fit for criminal sociopaths, or taking dangerous combinations of uppers and downers.  Go ahead, scan the album art of their independently released El Calvario.  A collage of stark black & white stills and photos invoke the spectrum of human evils.  Yes, a Spanish Corrupted comparison just clicked in your brain.  A crusty take on death-doom.  Dani’s death rasps (with complimentary moans from drummer Oscar)  bounce from side to side down the Moorish stone staircase, or up the abandoned warehouse stairwell.  Whichever setting suits your drug use.  Ricard’s guitar sways and lurches.  His use of bends that distort the workman-like dreading riffs work really well. Like one hand outstretched barely gripping the handrail and one fractured leg being half dragged up each step.  The 100 meters between you and the rubbish heap of a bed might as well be the english channel.  Once there, the reward of slipping into a false bliss you’ve worked the last day and half scraping and hustling for.  Now that damn door.  It must weigh 100 kilos.  And I’ll be goddamned if it’s locked this time.  If I had the strength I’d just as well bash my own brains in against that goddamned handle.  ”Ceremonia de los Penitentes” is a great soundtrack for such a pathetic slog.

El Calvario is a five song ep.   While it is sludge and played at the requisite mid to slow pace, there’s also a rocking economy to these songs.  Even at 6:00 in average length they get going with the single minded purposefulness of a dope fiend..  There’s no ambling four minute instrumental build to get you to a two minute song. Ok, opener “Via Crucis” is an instrumental but it’s indicative overall of what you are going to hear through the following 5 tracks.  Why not instead cycle through that two minutes of music three times at different tempos.   As I’ve expressed in other reviews I believe it’s just a matter of circumstance that new bands do themselves a favor by choosing brevity.  Distill down to the most potent dosage.  However condensed and rather straightforward El Calvario might be, Proscrito pepper these songs with some interesting effect laden guitar leads and solo’s.  3/4th’s into “Anuda la Soga” the song kicks up into a dragging version of the classic crust hardcore d-beat and sneaks in squirrely little solo part before easing back down to a simmer to end the song. A nice, brief change in tempo.

Production wise, the full breath sustaining, and warm tone of the drums is actually enough to make up for there being no bass.  It took me a a good 3 tracks to notice.  Credit to Moontower studio for making the most of a trio. Proscrito has a more thematic, or spiritual connection with Eyehategod as they make little use of groove or blues root.  Compared to Corrupted they have a bit more death metal in the blood but are overall kindred in style and execution.   If you prefer the hymns of urban decay peddled by those aforementioned bands then go ahead and add this Spanish variation to the collection.

The distant muffle of aircraft.  Your entire body clenches in dread.  There’s no way to escape or place to run in time to even pretend you’re safe.  Where the bombs hit is entirely unpredictable. Then 3 distinct explosions.  Sheer confusion and local chaos.  Smoke and dust hang.  There’s a brief silence.  As you start to relax from the temporary crippled state of being sounds of your surroundings begin to fade in.  Murmuring of exclaiming voices.  Punctuations of painful wailing begin to cut through.  Unintelligible commands from some direction.   But you are still here, having completed a personal reality check.  There’s a sudden exhilaration that you aren’t dead.  Adrenaline is distributing.  Flowing from the back of your skull, down the neck, into your hands.  Shuddering, and clenching a fist you feel a triumph of survival while surrounded by the chaos of war.

Fin write that triumph-of-survival into the melodies and into their songs. One might describe the melodies as similar to what you hear coming from Folk/pagan black metal acts residing in Scandinavia or far Eastern Europe but it’s not quite on the button.   Environment and place is absolutely a factor that comes through in music.  Being from a fast pace American metropolis of Chicago,IL  has certainly shaped the two members of Fin and naturally how they write music.  The product is devoid of fat.  Hell it’s devoid of some of the meat even, leaving only the most protein condensed loin or flank.  Not unlike the speed and condensed experience of living in one of the country’s largest cities. Eleven songs scream by with nary an intro, build up, break down, and certainly no meandering folk-ish passages.  “Outlaws” is the exception with a short intro that could fit into a 60’s western film.  Otherwise, the most you get is a four beat drum roll or fill into a song and it’s off like a serenade of arrows (if there isn’t a term to describe a hell of a lot of arrows being shot simultaneously then I’ve created one.  If there is already then I advocate changing it to be “serenade of arrows”) whistling down into a valley of trapped, horse mounted enemies.

Before I continue on with the review of this latest album I’m compelled to also heap gratuitous praise on 2015’s The Furrows Of Tradition for I assume not as many heard it as should have. Good god dang that record shreds!  Songs like “Bliss Apparition Of Sunlight”, and “The Furrows Of Tradition” are teeth gritting explosive.  The riffs inject you with a level of energy beyond which the average human knows how to safely expel.  Essentially what I’m saying here about Furrows… applies just as well to the new album.  In comparison though I find the production on Arrows of a Dying Age to be a bit more tame and the mixing is more blended than on Furrows… where the drums and guitars had more separation.  A certain harsh clarity between the spartan drums, guitar, vocal.  Evaluated separately the guitar and drums have very much the same overall tone and aggressive attack as Furrows… .Considering that I believe it came down to the mix and the overall smoothing effect.  The guitar covers a wider audio field where on Furrows… it is a piercing bright bolt which I found to be a potent weapon that made the album so unique, but could understand that for others might simply come off as harsh.

Production aside, the songs on Arrows… gallop out of the glorious past with the same fervor.  Riffs like sunlight refracting off of crude helmets and fresh arrowheads before breaking through the center of your face.  The snare drum blasting like a steam driven press in the waste fog of a newly industrial Britain.  All of these settings are brought to mind as I listen through “Strings Of Discourse”, “With Spear, Arrow, and Oath”, and “With Hammering Glance”.  Having been following the band I’m pleased to see that with the release of Arrows… Fin are enjoying a level up in recognition that is mightily deserved both stateside, and likely more so in Europe, having recently played as part of an impressive line up at this years SteelFest Open Air in Finland.  In some ways I might call Fin an American answer to Immortal’s Pure Holocaust if you remove most of the mid-paced or slow parts and swap ice demons for Scythian horse warriors that never once lost in battle.  Listening to Fin you might just find in yourself a strength previously unknown, not a soundtrack to self destruction.

Upon my first listen I had two conflicting responses to Rites of the Mangled. I acknowledged that it might be no-nonsense to a fault.  That after a fleeting listen it would disintegrate in the vast internet bargain heap of solid metal albums.  On the  other hand, I was undeniably caught by their slimy waves of grooving momentum and transitions into lurching, wounded passages of draggy death metal.  It’s one of those records that could very well discarded if only given a cursory once through listen.  There are small details that reveal themselves upon playback.  The album comes in swinging with “Circle Cursed”.  You hear immediately how Morbid Flesh combine the d-beat charge familiar from so many classic Swedish death metal albums but an Entombed clone they are not.  Morbid Flesh spray the coagulated and evil groove more akin to that of Convulse’s World Without God. Especially due to the lurching, but not-quite-doom parts.

The album continues on in this fashion, with the band dropping part after part of the death metal equivalent to movie theatre candy until you stop acting surprised that it delivers a straight catheter of gelatinous junk food to quell your extreme sweet tooth (Somewhere there is a nurse with the story of a guy that admitted themselves to an emergency room from doing this).  In this way I could compare it to the delivery of albums like Death’s Scream Bloody Gore or the recent Fatalist The Bitter End.  No waiting or having to be a patient listener.  Nothing complicated that requires active mental analysis.  Just a barrage of immediacy from the moment it starts, right through to the fade out of final track “Evil Behind You”, which ends on a pained solo.  Like that of a maimed victim left to futily crawl in agony.  Their moans fading as you walk further toward the cave opening and into the crisp wet air at dusk.

If Morbid Flesh got any one thing right it’s the production of Javi Felez and Moontower Studio.  The overall tone is round, warm, and and where there might otherwise be space to give each instrument some air it is choked up with thick, noxious digestive fumes filling the gaps between thudding drum strikes, cavernous bass sweeps, and leaky, hemorrhaging guitar riffs.  The sound and mixing  is the pillar which holds this album up, without which you might unfortunately just have another solid old school death metal demo relic in an already tall pile.  One with current and hefty production like this inspires a double take.  Seven tracks has always seemed like an odd length for any record.  Too long for an ep, too short for a full-length, but Morbid Flesh offer up a lean resume for their craft with no intros, outros, instrumentals, or samples.  I commend their approach to a final product.  Where your sound might be well tread territory, and competition is high, don’t give the listener a single momentary reason for their attention to be diverted.

This prize is a result of two major factors:  (1) Their catalog is considered largely unblemished in quality Even as their sound has cleaned up from one release to the next  they stay true to the fundamentals of the sound.  (2) The face and brains behind Goatmoon, Blackgoat Gravedesecrator, seems to be held in rather high regard as a bastion of unwavering idealistic and musical integrity.  Whether those ideals might be considered “negative” or “regressive” to an outside observer is of no concern, for fans and participants consider black metal a cultural realm where outside rules or opinion are hardly welcome.  A point I’m sure many would gladly declare:  The black metal underground is not a safe space.  If you want to read further into Blackgoat’s ideologies and related controversies there are many internet forums or the band’s own lyric content to be explored.  From here on it’s about the music.

It’s 2017 and Goatmoon grace this spinning rock of garbage with much anticipated new album Stella Polaris.  If you’re a fan it’s all a bit brief, taking into account the intro, mid-album instumental, and outro.  However, if you’re a fan you’ll be damn pleased with anything new Goatmoon unleash to the hordes.  I introduced myself to Goatmoon only last year to be honest.  Realizing the first few albums are impossible to own (I consider $70 – $90 on discogs for a cd ‘impossible’) I downloaded them.  Starting with Death Before Dishonor I was immediately struck by the viciously raw, clanging production and Blackgoat’s shredded, hateful vocals.  The blood in my veins turned cold and black.   It didn’t take much longer for the simple but ruthlessly catchy guitar riffs to present themselves.  The goat of their logo hath speared me by its horns.  The next album, 2007’s Finnish Steel Storm, cleans up considerably and the songs only benefit because of it.  The addition of prevalent organ brought a fresh but familiar accompanying factor for melody.  Still considered the band’s crowning glory, every song is an achievement of excellent song writing made up at the core of powerfully ascendant riffs, one after another.  There isn’t a great number of black metal bands that exude such a high level of pissed-off energy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUKOoMPn_gA

I hasten to continue the album by album run down but those leading up to Stella Polaris featured more pagan/folk influence in the riffs with presence of flute, and more acoustic guitar parts.  Stella Polaris doesn’t exactly loose those elements as integrate them seamlessly whether it’s wrapped into the black metal part or a separate passage altogether.  It harks back to Finnish Steel Storm, and tightens up the pagan metal parts from the last two albums, but is even more composed.  “Kansojen Havittaja” for instance could’ve easily appeared in the track listing for that album.  The main riff that begins and ends the song is catchy and effortlessly epic.  It’s swift, soaring, and deadly, bringing to mind the gods of old existing in the same physical space but on a separate spiritual dimension.  Drinking, battling, or floating beyond the tree canopy they can see the people but the people continue on in complete ignorance of their grand antics.  “Wolf Night” conjures the unwieldy energy from Death Before Dishonor with a vicious and cutting riff.  Unexpectedly, at 0:47, it goes the epic route with a masterful keyboard heavy launch into the snowy reaches of the arctic night.  It’s damn impressive what they delivered in just a minute and a half.

Stella Polaris has other unexpected elements show up through the record.  Track 2 “Stella Polaris” ends with melodic guitar passage/solo that would sound at home on a Children Of Bodom album.  Imagine that… flare on a Goatmoon album.  It’s a solid opening that acts similarly to a play programme given out to entering audience.  It features every tool in their toolbox that they’ve accrued to this point:  The fast 2^nd wave black metal riff, a less speedy verse, pagan metal interlude and, why not, a fairly classic heavy metal finish.  Perhaps the strikingly bright cover art in contrasting blue and purple, is the tip-off  that this is another progression of their sound, not a sequel of a previous album.  “Sonderkommmando Nord” is a reflective mid-paced instrumental.  Very well paced with a building melodic guitar theme coming in at 2:57, right before a listener might otherwise trail off.  It’s a well-placed lead into “Warrior”, a really solid and fairly straight forward black metal tune.  It fits fine into the album but the real stand out part is the pagan metal breakdown near the half way point.  “Conqueror” is similar but stronger, coming in defiantly with a sneering, punked-up black metal riff.  This transitions to a now familiar soaring keyboard and guitar verse.  “Conqueror” also brings back that mean organ more prevalent on Finnish Steel Storm.  It really does peak the levels on the sinister meter paired with the underlying guitar riff.  The album ends with “Overlord”, a blasting affair falling ever faster toward the Lapland landscape like Tsjuder as depicted on the albums cover.  The melodic yet menacing verse riff is classic.  Had it been featured on some album in the early 90’s, say Immortal or Emperor, certainly the song would find its way onto best of lists to this day.  The organ returns in triumph to lead charge to the end, rather than the last song fade politely away.

In the pantheon of the Goatmoon discography Stella Polaris truly feels like a natural progression from all that came previous.  Every element of strength the band has contained since the beginning is present.  Stella Polaris is pulls back some of the melancholy, and artfully integrates the folkish instrumentation from previous album Voitto tai Valhalla such that it doesn’t come off as parts separate from the black metal core.  Goatmoon’s gift of writing ‘effortlessly epic’ songs pervades through all of Stella Polaris.  Combined with the crystalline production, and brisk run time of about 28 minutes, Stella Polaris makes for one of the bands best albums both technically and musically.

Brain Spasm take every element of this niche style to their unnatural limits.  There isn’t a crumb worth of ‘tech’ on Toxic Monstrosities.  Which is by no means a cut.   The drums blast, go d-beat, or drop to simple time keeping to support a brief groove.  The guitars are down-tuned and distorted in a way that mimics the visceral bathroom occurrence following a Las Vegas seafood buffet.    If there was a solo on this record I’d feel obligated to hit the forums and decry “sell outs!”.  Thankfully it didn’t come to that.  The bass also sounds to be run through fuzz or distortion, at least some of the time.   Doing this for the bass and actually having it come through all steroids jacked in the recording really maximizes the heavy-ocity (what else would you call it). So, brutal bands out there, I encourage the free and open use of ridiculous bass distortion.

The vocals fluctuate between a midrange pig snort and what I assume is effect processed low gurglings similar in sound to that of cocaine-fueled aggressive toilet plunging.  Like the bass, for goregrind processed vocals elevate the ludicrous factor, which is necessary.  Because it’s goregrind.  All put together Toxic Monstrosities is a festering wall of rhythmically throbbing glad bags filled with lawnmower-ed woman parts, Black Label beer cans,  and losing lottery tickets.  Ernest P. Worrell, can I get a spittle accentuated “Ewwwwwwwww”.

I wouldn’t doubt that a solid amount metal fans would also count themselves wrestling fans.  If not now than at least as kids.   So when that last track comes on and sounds faintly familiar yet different in style from what just played before it,  give it a minute to click.  A review of the tracklist will confirm these maniacs in fact have ended their album (e.p.?) with a cover of… yeah the Ultimate Warrior theme song.  They also drop one of Roddy Piper’s great lines from They Live to open track two, “Consume!”.

A special type of metalhead is going to love this record.   Brain Spasm deliver a very quick humor filled romp of flatulent gore grind whose punchline delivered enough to make me rewind and hear the whole bit from the beginning.  This review might be short but you have to hit play on their bandcamp and race to the bathroom before you blow through another pair of Hanes today.  I did you a favor.

Largo Forte is a great example of how production can elevate the music to 4th dimensional levels.  Everything is dialed in for a cohesive style and vision.  The band seriously has to be pleased with the sonics of their new baby.  The guitars are granular and arid enough to cause the listener’s nose to bleed.  Else where they can crank from tremolo/spring reverb coated slithering’s to heaving sludge-core, and the sandstorm waves of crunch are in full definition.  Aside from the already mentioned references I can’t help but hear Coelesce’s 1999 argument for why “metalcore” doesn’t have to be a dirty term, 0:12 Revolution in Just Listening.  There’s a certain rhythmic chug and similar harmonic guitar tones that the two albums share.  I didn’t get far into the opening track “Eighteen” before I was compelled to make the comparison.  They are not the same beast, However.  Hammerhands take the sound of that album and spread it out across the harsh expanse of northern Arizona.

Title track “Largo Forte” drops a dose of local psychedelic plant life and takes a walk through a slot canyon where native rock art comes alive and Tom Waits ghost follows from above, strumming menacingly as the passage winds tighter.  Creeping interlude “Mezzo Grave” transitions in as the yellow-red sun beyond view contorts the shadows and dehydration hazes reality.  “If you’re not part of the party, you’re part of the problem” brings back the aggressive desert core.  A sore reminder of the situation you just awoke to on that slot canyon floor come sun up.  Indeed, it’s no party.  “Where we go” is a pensive, sinister ballad.  Springy, metallic reverb haunts our disembodied protagonist, soundtracking a montage of desperate wandering; he is weak but soldiering on.  “Darkerness” brings that desert chill many forget comes at night in that environment.  It’s straight ahead sludgy hardcore.  Distant, long yells and exactly the riffs you imagine give it a feel not unlike darlings of the style, Thou.  However, at about 6:15 our poor bastard reaches his human limits, convulsing into a puddle-like state as ancestral spirits rally to revive him from near death.  “The Hardest Thing” concludes the album in full southwest regalia.  Hot tin guitars and mezcal shredded vocal exasperations spell out the end of this tale.

Largo Forte was a nice surprise of an album.  I can’t say I’ve been listening to a diverse array of metal or genre-bending bands lately but Hammerhands snapped me out of it a bit.  Their choices in cross pollination prove to me the members have a high level of taste.  I’ve always been a fan for the sort of detached, 90s indie/death rock clean vocals that are featured throughout the album.  Think Swervedriver, or the weathered americana of Michael Gira from his Angels Of Light material.   By song three of my initial listen I shot 3 different friends a link to the album, none of which have precisely the same taste but I thought would really dig the twist that Hammerhands is peddling.  Largo Forte has closely curated production detail and earns high style points for experimenting with these particular genre blends in metal without it being jarring or a fatiguing listen.  Put on an obscure spaghetti western flick while listening, for added effect.

My interest in the band arose because I stumbled on an interview by Metal Ireland.   The interview features a song by song breakdown, explaining the inspiration and subject of each.  Now, I’ve watched several professional and amateur (read: Youtube) documentaries on Ireland’s ancient cultures but they really only hit the headlines.  The inspirations in the interview had me completely fascinated, short as they are.  “Buried” chronicles a shocking community practice that hold the fast the adage “With great power, comes great responsibility”; Kings wielded power and privilege but, at least in old Ireland, their power was not absolute.  During particularly hard times when harvests failed, whether plague, famine, or drought, the king was blamed and paid with their lives for the perceived failure.  The bogs of Ireland preserved the bodies of those disposed, and among them were kings.  That level of accountability between the sovereign and the under-class is rare in monarchical systems.  I encourage listeners to read the interview and lyrics for three other songs of equally engaging subject matter.

The music that supports these vignettes of grim historical practice fluctuate between death scented black metal and black singed death metal.  The four songs actually seems to be sequenced to flow from more black to death metal.All washed  in an earthy, obscured filth.  I imagine one of these local kings emerging after centuries in the bog, shouting and clawing in futile effort to advance from his peat grave.  “Buried” is a craggy, dragging instrumental intro that shifts to an urgent black metal warm up.  “Lynch” continues the black metal dirt smearing.  By “Drowned” the death metal starts to seep up but it’s more or less a split bill.  Beginning as a measured dirge, breaking out as blasting black metal by the two minute mark and ending with a more lively dark ambient passage.  “Coscartac” starts similarly, but stretching the death-doom part out and is black in a first wave sense.

Coscradh refer, in the Metal Ireland interview, to Goat Lord, Hellhammer, and Culte Des Ghoules as hard influences, and these are certainly evident from a once through listen.  The production overall is very natural.  You can hear the rawness of each instrument, and the drums particularly, but it’s not quite as lo-fi as Goat Lord or Hellhammer.  The snare is very dry, open, and without resonance.  It’s a bit distracting in the first few songs but seems to even out in the mix after that.  Not that Coscradh don’t add their own tonal differences, but what remains most interesting is the cultural context they use to platform their band.  The very specific practices that each song is based go a long way toward strengthening the music.  Coscradh succeed in invoking the grim Irish history without dragging folk instruments into the equation, instead putting personal tweaks on old metal of death.  Like constructing a traditional burial mound but choosing a different shape than that of the one further down the bend.

Where Passages gave us a hybrid creature combining slamming brutality and musical finesse, this dual e.p. splits that entity apart into two unique and distilled forces: one representing the summation of all earthly horror, the other spiritual depravity.  Disposal Of The Dead and Dharmata.  Each e.p. being so different from the other that an uninformed listener might figure them to be two different bands entirely.  Disposal Of The Dead is modern brutal death metal.  Dharmata is progressive reimagining of classic death metal.  From production to cover art nearly everything between these recordings is different.  Packaging them together seemed purely convenient but each side of the gorge is connected by a single dilapidated suspension bridge. A common theme rooted in Hindu spiritualism and culture made conspicuous in the titles and lyrics.

DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD

The e.p. Begins with intro “Remotio Mortuorum”.  A monastic, vaguely eastern chamber drone that fades into a churning death metal warm up.  Don’t be alarmed by the electronic snare drum tone with that harsh wave cut-off.  It immediately caught my ear but it’s a sound exclusive to the intro.  The rest of the e.p. features a more cutting medium-high snare, and another that is somewhat dry and open.  Often an issue, if not an outright miss with brutal death metal, here the snare sits perfectly in the mix and is always clear even when Lille hits hyper blast.

“Suttee” is an archaic Hindu custom for which a widow voluntarily immolates herself either on the funeral pyre of her deceased husband, or shortly after his death.  A difficult to fathom ritual, as brutal as it is morbidly endearing. The song bearing this words meaning begins already in full blaze.  Crackling, straining snare blasts and guitars like smoldering human fat barrage the onlooking neighbors and family.  In short time the music slumps in exhaustion from having endured the horrific scene, the riffs barely mustering to shuffle onward until 2:13 where Christian Kuhn taps out one of few, short melodic flares that dot Disposal Of The Dead.  It’s a fitting analogy for Defeated Sanity, that they aren’t a band motivated by brutality for the sake of being over the top, but there is thoughtfulness behind the writing, even if it’s not immediately apparent, such as with Disposal Of The Dead.  The songs couldn’t be this impactful without the band closely engineering the structure.

Fundamentals folks.  Fundamentals.  Disposal Of The Dead is Defeated Sanity uncomplicating their sound and pushing all of the equalizer faders up to +100 bowel dropping, comically fictitious measurement of power output, like Marty Mcfly in the intro to Back To The Future.  It harks back to Chapters Of Repugnance but with a level of refinement rarely encountered in the genre of brutal death metal.  It’s as if the band went through a six-sigma black belt training program to produce music with the greatest impact from only their statistically strongest assets as a band.  Which all sounds sterile, and like what your upper middle class uncle talks about at family gatherings, until you play it and your vision blurs from the rumbling crematory blast furnace of “Into The Soil”.

The guitar’s are down-tuned to subterranean depths of heavy and the bass isn’t far below creating a combined effect not unlike the continuous wave of a jet engines sonic boom.  At other points the bass separates, buzzing above the guitars like a amphetamine jacked bumble bee.  Lille Gruber dives into your chest with concussive groupings of 8 snare blasts each and the skies split open until the song settles into a chugging groove.  It’s not complicated, just good song writing.  Disposal Of The Dead has been an energetic lesson in the laws of brutal death metal, but flare and the ascendant musical realm is near listeners.  Just on the other side of this septic, disease rich valley.  The indigenous people call it Dharmata.

DHARMATA

“Dharmata” is a sanskrit word with grasp-at-air meanings like “suchness”, “the way it is”, or “the absolute from which all proceeds”.  That last one offers just enough to draw from.  First in the sequence, Disposal Of The Dead gives you everything you could have expected and, in a way, buffers fans before the neck tweaking reaction from Dharmata’s progressive death metal reality check.  Disposal Of The Dead addresses the ugly side of Hindu religious culture, Dharmata the wonderment and mystery of divine enlightenment.  Lyrics for “The Mesmerizing Light” describe and ascendant experience for the believer. Meeting Hindu deities and the overwhelming effects of being in their presence.  The subject describes an encounter of both grand spiritual ascension and a level of fear.  Dharmata balances these two emotions throughout the five songs.  Aggressive passages blend with melodic, vaguely progressive, illuminations.  Each side entangled with the other, vying for dominance, but neither fully subduing the other.

Shortly into having introduced Dharmata to a friend he summarized with, “ You know, this is Cynic worship.  Focus without the robot vocals”.  Also without the female vocals.  I added that you could also reference Atheist.  He concurred.  You also can’t help but hear mid-period Death as the vocals are so dead on for Chuck Schuldiner’s style.   Even the bass tone has that same clean, mid-range buzz you can find on Individual Thought Pattern.  Dharmata falls into a sphere of the aforementioned bands but benefiting from condensed structuring, there is simply more going on per minute of song than any albums by the mentioned, and a modern production that allows every detail to be emphasized, like a temple built only of mirrors.

Dharmata dials up the progressive elements by increasing the infusion of technical jazz fusion, not without those light eastern touches of melody.  “Return To Samsara”  begins with a minute worth of feathery guitar and moseyed bass lines, smoothly building intensity until the vocals kick in at 1:20. The song downshifts into longer jazzy passages 2 more times over it’s eight and a half minute length.  Lille Gruber’s drumming is nimble as if his parts were recorded in a NASA aircraft high into ionosphere where the effects of gravity is less.  His flurry of strikes like the patterns of swarming firefly’s.  Credit is very much due to new vocalist Josh Welshman for nailing both styles between the e.p.’s.  Dharmata particularly, offers a  spotlight demonstration of guitarist Christian Kuhn’s masterful playing.  It’s not a  complete secret but it might’ve otherwise have taken the Passages Into Deformity bonus DVD to fully appreciate.

Having revisited the records for which I made comparison’s, Dharmata is a busy bee indeed.  It truly flutters and maneuvers with an energy not bound by the physical.  It’s the spirit of that burned wife in “Suttee”, transformed to light, traveling straight and true through the multiverse to be judged by Yama – god of death.  Will she move on from or return to samsara for another go through of the reincarnation cycle?   If Defeated Sanity is subject to the cycle of reincarnation they’re giving a hell of a time about it, coming back as a more evolutionary sophisticated creature with each album.  The production and mixing is impeccable for both e.p.’s, simultaneously playing up to their respective styles and accentuating their differences.  It’s August and I can say with certainty that Disposal Of The Dead / Dharmata will top my year end list.  In a genre that chases extremity, Defeated Sanity reach a new edge without a gore factor by bisecting itself into two complementary parts.  They split their stock to increase investment from the metal consuming public, and power in their music.  Analysts predict continued growth of the band through exciting, and disruptive new strategies.

Marquis de Sade is included in the pantheon of writers whose material is oft used in metal as an inspirational base, right up there with the likes of H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R. Token, and Friedrich Nietzsche.  Inspirations that are just as likely to be considered tired yet fully understandable.  Thankfully Imperial Triumphant use de Sade with a respectable level of subtlety and not like an assumed identity as other bands have done so with these bygone figures.  There’s a natural, pleasantly even sound to the mix like that you would find on a modern avant jazz record.  The guitars are overdriven as expected on a metal record but the usual adjectives such as “crushing”, or “blazing” aren’t appropriate here.  Like a Naked City these songs can change on a dime but not necessarily from frenzy to greater frenzy.  They call upon the metallic skin sheering of album Leng Tch’e as much as the urban mescaline hazes of the ambient Absinthe.  These are passages of forced submission when the black leather restraints are being applied and the absinthe/oxymorphone cocktail is kicking in.   There’s an inappropriate, playful yet dangerous vibe to Inceste which does the DeSade inspiration justice and lures you into their crawlspace of shameful desire.

“Libertine” is a teasing intro.  Think any number of Morricone’s compositions for 70’s Euro art film.  An ambling piano build with some French fellow declaring warning before transitioning to true opening track “Kaleidescope Orgies”.  That designer drug cocktail is now saturating the senses with misshapen, bending guitars and shambolic drumming.  Echoing low growls from the orgy high priest bellow across this urban 10th floor temple.  Just as your head begins adjusting the scene of red and black lit bodies, naked or nearly, becomes apparent and an overload of ecstatic saxophone dives in.  If it makes you uncomfortable it means it’s exciting.  At the songs most fevered height it might sound completely free and chaotic but there are rules at this secret club.  Suddenly at 3:50 the moans, chatter, and faces are tuned out.  A brief minute of subjective reflection: Have you given in to the prurient surroundings, or is it something else that has control over you?  By the 04:45 mark the music again erupts and these questions are drowned because the flesh screeches out.  You are now a member and shackled servant.

Under the street lamp outside of the unassuming commercial building, where you participated in an act that your conscious mind can barely yet acknowledge, you exhale a last “Breath of Innocence”.  Thoughts of reflection and speculation on the night’s bizarre ritual are careening between the right and left sides of the brain.  Guitars swoop and dart meeting head on with a shifting wall of snare blasts and long, full kit rolls.  It’s all now making you nauseous.   From 04:40 to the end of the song a cycle of thudding quick double kick/tom fills and clanging guitar hold as you would to lamp post after lamp post , trying to steady yourself and gain some composure while stumbling on down unfamiliar dark avenues before disappearing down the subway steps.

Weeks pass and on a crisp November night you are psychically summoned.   A different building, to a freight elevator, and this time you are going down below the streets.  The elevator rumbles to a stop and two women in red latex masks silently beckon you to follow.   “Oblivion in Morsels” leads in with Mid-paced blasting and, to this point, the most straight forward guitar playing on the album build nervously from a short, circular melodic riff to alternate picked chugging.  The corridor winds slightly until descending stairs appear.  A lone guitar plays a quick ascending run preluding a spectral chorus of disciples from beyond the stairway; the voices of many dozens.  As their last ringing notes fall, the demonic call of the high priest speaks to those present and beyond.  The members respond again in full chorus.  This section of music Is the pinnacle moment on Inceste. The sight of this lair, lit by a hanging garden of flame, is vastly overwhelming.  The group of servants sense your entrance and the entrancing chorus doesn’t appear again through the song.  What follows is furiously picked, disorienting black riffs have a theremin-like warbling effect, likely helped by the chosen sweet spot of reverb.  The bass throughout the album provides a dense surrounding enclosure that contains the wild, tonally jarring guitars like a city sewage tunnel does for the mentally ravaged homeless population.  It’s function is providing atmosphere, not a rhythm.   Ahead of the rows of cloaked men and masked women there is a circle of 8 others with a space that awaits a ninth.  You aren’t late to this depraved gathering, but right on time.

Imperial Triumphant accomplishes a lot in short amount of time.  I’m impressed with how many twists they navigate while never sacrificing the mood for thrill.  In my first listen I honestly couldn’t predict where a song was going at any one point.  Based on what I sampled of their previous output this ep proves they are on their own isolated path.  It’s also an excellent highlight of the ep as an important format of it’s own not only for transition material, outtakes, or a tool to quench the fans.  I’m a bit weary of whether Imperial Triumphant could maintain momentum and sustain atmosphere without possibly sagging over the course of 40 plus minutes.  I’d love to be proved otherwise but while Inceste is brief it takes exactly the time it needs and I’m happy to start it over from the beginning.  It’s an ep that will be on my year end list but should be recognized to be just as substantial as any of top ending full length albums on the list.

“Hey, dude that’s dismissive.  Drop the cynicism and do it right!”

Ok.  Sure.  Point taken.  “Don’t judge a book…”, “What you don’t know might surprise you”, etc.  Even if the cover of this “book” is as telling as Johnny Cash, the Autobiography by Johnny Cash.  The many tentacled horrid life form on the cover beacons us to heed the Manuscripts of Retribution so let’s dive into it’s living pages to find out whether or not Virulency is the key to unleashing incomprehensible knowledge, pestilence from ghastly realms, or a good album.

Taken straight from the copy, “Hailing from Spain, these guys specialize in intricate guttural ultra death metal brutality”.  Whooooaa! “Ultra death metal brutality”?!  For a subgenre that revels in and makes a contest out of ever increasing shows of disgusting covers, lyrics, guitar tone, and brain scrambling drumming that is a mighty claim.  If “Ultra brutal death metal” is a term we are using now it is one that would be reserved for an elite tier of bands.  A tier that would include card carrying members like Defeated Sanity, Wormed, Devourment, and others.  Bands that execute a mix of tectonic heaviness, technicality, and arrangement to create something that inspires repeated listens.  Like any genre there is a bottomless demon pit of arms, heads, severed breasts full of this stuff.  And also like any review the point is to guide you as to whether you should even take the time to sample at least 3 of their songs for no longer than 7 to 15 seconds each.  Because that’s what people do with limited time and this many bands.  Onward!

What initially lead me to presume there might something more worth exploring with this record is the pops of fretless bass briefly breaking through the high gain guitar chugging.  An element of some surprise on a ultra brutal death metal album.  It doesn’t rumble so much as transmutate from slow bending to rapid oscillation.   From what I hear, nudging the fader up a few hairs  on the bass in no way would have taken away from the guitars, only enhancing the dynamics of a solid album.  To be expected, the bass is heard best when hitting notes on the southern range of frets.  Each time it rears gives the listener a new point at which to latch onto and try to follow again as it subsides back behind the guitar.  Like Quint and crew on the Orca sighting for when Jaws’ fin breaks the water.  Aiming to fire the harpoon lead barrels hoping to pierce the sneaking beast and trace when it again dives beneath the red/black waves.  Just below the surface the obscured form that is the bass is observed darting and straifing, at times complementing the rhythm but just as often breaking off from the guitar, thrashing into open air and back below.   So goes the endless battle of the bassist in metal.  Highly skilled, wanting to make an impression by their chosen instrument, but sorely overshadowed or shrugged off entirely.   Keep fighting the fight bass players.

The other instruments fill the requisite rolls of such an album.  Extra heavy, high gain guitar is played with frequent rhythmic, semi-melodic punctuations of the familiar harmonic pinch/squeal technique as on the first 15 seconds of “Myriapod Constructology – Part II – Absolute Zenith”.  The drums flow nicely but don’t quite propel the music.  They blast and fill where expected.  The clicking double bass playing makes up for the more blended, round snare.  At times performing as a speeding conveyor belt on which the vocals and guitars tumble along.  The vocals are more throaty with an insect chirping edge.  Everything comes together in what I consider to be the standout track, “…From Putrescible To Perpetual” which features one of the few points that the fretless bass is given full spotlight.  Making a great artistic decision, DisJorge (ha, nice play)  instead of going for a wild technical display, winds the song down with long fret runs down and up the neck.  The effect of which sounds like the creature of the cover retreating in slime back into it’s interdimensional portal.

The other highlight worth mentioning is the outro built into final track “Sculptured Didelphic Uterus”.  When bands do the intro/outro/interlude thing right I make it a point to mention because the point of full length albums is to be a complete journey and these parts can be the connective tissue.  The last, short track morphs smoothly from raging clicks and chug into an atmospheric industrial number with a hulking, machine press beat and rhythmic guitar riff cycle.  This soundtracks a succession of life sounds starting with that of lust fueled sex moans fading on through the screams of a birthing mother, to cries of a newborn child and ending with a male voice repeating the same sentence.  Honestly I can’t tell what he’s saying but that doesn’t take away from the fact that this outro piece is one of the factors that make this work as an album.

Virulency doesn’t rise much further beyond the middle of the pack of current brutal death metal bands still…it manages to rise.  While it’s a really solid record it suffers from the same factor as that of most brutal death metal:  When listening from front to back the bludgeoning busyness turns into a soggy pile of anthropodermic books.  The ink from the pages running and blurring into undecipherable blotches.  It’s just what happens in this genre.  The fretless bass is the major case on which this review is built and why I would recommend fans of the genre to listen.  And while the fretless bass is colorful I don’t feel that it quite supports the accentuation of “ultra” nor entry into the high tier of previously mentioned bands.  It could rank on a year end list of only brutal death metal, between the 10th and 5th slot.  I will also be checking out other acts on the New Standard Elite label.

By the sound of this album, Infernal Curse, in spite of all pleading from the producer, held a sharpened upside down cross to his neck and commanded thee to crank everything.  Of course, if metal is for anything, it’s extremity right?  On Apocalipsis the catholic cathedral reverb is cranked a few notches past what most bands would deem to be tasteful. The vocals are one solid stream of spewing ash cloud, no distinguishable words or changes in tone.  The guitars are tuned low, distorted and pushed until the notes convert to the blackest oil forcing through the speaker cone spreading outward from the cabinet saturating each layer of the recording.  The guitar solo/lead parts are boosted enough to get your attention and are generally of an unhinged thrashy style.  The bass surely lends to this heavy blend, running deep like the guilt felt after a spirited midnight mass sermon.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the bass output came from 2 1×18 cabinets.  The drumming serves the whole, riding the middle, pulling with muster to keep the songs wrangled and continuing in a forward trajectory.  The Toms rumble uncontrollably, and due again to the reverb each snare hit sounds like 1.7 with long aftershocks.  It’s an unwavering, monochromatic black vacuum of an album, consuming hope and expelling sulfuric vapor.

Bluntly put, Apocalipsis comes off as a monotonous rush to usher in the age of the anti-christ, but with strong atmosphere and delivery which is what should hook you even if the riffs don’t right away.  Repeated listens reveal it to be a more varied record than what first impressions would lead you to assume.  At 4:31 of “Litanies Unto Djinn”  starts one of those unhinged solo’s that I mentioned and which offers some silvery light apart from the shadows.  “Obituaries” is built on some early US death metal style groove.  Each song includes passages of mid-paced death groove though they never really change the overall forceful momentum of the record, but serve as devices foreshadowing the next collapsing-cave like, down tuned bashing.  The longest track “Adharma” is placed three-quarters in and stands out as featuring longer doom-y parts leading to and following their signature grinding blackened assault.  Track 1 and 9 are short intro and outro respectively so you really have a 7 track album at 33 minutes which is pretty perfect all factors considered.

Infernal Curse offer up a destructive black/death metal record with tones and production of a dead serious (show me a fun one) funeral doom record.  They’re rooted in Sex Trash and Sarcafago, but with the modern heft and emphasized atmosphere of playing Ignivomous through an echoplex tape delay.  Personally I very much enjoy and gravitate to records that are unrelenting, urgent, yet rather monotonous in their delivery.  Monotony is almost always is used in a negative connotation with music yet it can be commonly attributed across metal and other genres that find support and fans generation after generation whether it’s classic techno or atmospheric black metal.  Within the context of Apocalipsis the word is simply meant as descriptor and not detraction.  Beyond that is the conviction of those delivering the music, and I feel it here from the band.  Bass player Deicidal Abominator could very well be hammering out two notes over an entire song but my impression is that live he would come off like a witch doctor under the possession of ancestral spirits, his savage playing channeling their dark power.  Infernal Curse really sell the material and that’s more than can be said for many albums.