Misantropologi – Undergang

Dark Descent Records – 2017

Another album featuring David Torturdød, this time listed as David Mikkelsen. 2017's been a busy year for the man, and we thank him for it, as the three records he's participated in have been phenomenal !

Undergang is a danish death metal band whose cover art has always been reminiscent of that oldschool, hand-drawn demotape-style art common 20 years ago. David is responsible for most of it, shaping him out to be some kind of twisted artistic genius, only capable of creating the ugliest and most suffocating pieces.While their sound isn't that close to old-school death metal, they do oscillate between an osdm-tinged bouncier style and a more straightforward, brutal-influenced death metal, giving Misantropologi a very fun and almost merry aspect.

Mid-tempo grooves, slower dragging power chords, and drawling tremolo-picked melodies that trail off into the hellscape Undergang's created – Misantropologi, while more fun than a classic death metal album, is still sinister and evil. Some memorable leads help set the tone, such as that of En bedemands bekendelser, with notable Autopsy influence. Full-on chromatic writing and strange arpeggios give Misantropologi an edge over similar caverncore records.

David's vocal performance is impressive – his tone sometimes verges on goregrind-levels of toilet gurgling. The album would be dragged down by any vocals that weren't as sludgy and repugnant as the riffs are, and Torturdød understands this. Variation is out of the question, and while there isn't much to say about purely rythmical vocal lines, David certainly sounds powerful, despite somewhat low mixing.

Speaking of mixing and production, the latter is extraordinarily good for this kind of album – but not overbearingly so. The guitar tone has just enough clarity to feed my ears with delicious riffs, without losing its personality as a muddy vehicle for hatred. As a passing note, it's nice to hear death metal recorded in a mountain cave use clicking bass drums, and actually have it work, albeit not at the same level other modern death metal bands do.

Misantropologi goes from genre to genre – it's a pendulum, but neither apex takes itself seriously, which makes for a goddamn fun album.

Comments

DSKNT – PhSPHR Entropy

DSKNT – PhSPHR Entropy Sentient Ruin Records – 2017 DSKNT has been active since 2013, and somehow I only discovered them recently. As a fan of catastrophic black metal à la Deathspell Omega or Plebeian Grandstand, I was delighted to find another band in the relatively barren field of good avant garde black metal. The album kicks off with the best kind of strange, unnerving riff that sends a warning to the listener – you're in for a project with greater amplitude than most. Almost all of the riffs, excluding one or two in the latter portion of the record, have been soaked in the bath of avant garde, dripping with experimentation. Not scared of narrative composition, giving us a trip into his strange maze of a mind, Asknt creates sinuous riffs, with jagged edges and unnatural angles, but with more focus on the sinues and flow than similar artists, who often go for a slightly sharper aesthetic. There are moments of clarity, descents into madness, and long trips across ble...

Grime - Live

Grime Live – Oct. 2017 The air is heavy, the lights are dim, and the conversations skittle away, hiding in the corners as Grime takes to the stage. Eyes up and hair down, I knew we were in for something good. Grime, the italian sludge act, released their first album in 2013 on the well-known Mordgrimm records. They might be the best-named band I can think of – the unclean buzz of the strings and damp mix of instruments give off a filthy, pock-marked sound, the kind you'd hear from scraping a sewer floor. I didn't know of them until their 2015 record, Circle of Molesters, but they're the kind of band who can do no wrong. The first note hit, and the bass shook me in unholy ways. After staggering a few steps back, I looked up at the stage and saw some of the best lighting since Messuggah. A white backdrop, searchlight-style movement carving the silhouettes of Grime into my retina. Marco, lead guitar, was spectacular in his theatrics. Doubling over in rage and p...

Hexenoise – II

Hexenoise – II March 2019 – Unsigned After the excellent catastrophic sludge monolith that was Heavy Drugs Smashed Amps, Hexendrone began showing signs of veering straight off the cliff and free-fall into the jagged forest of noise, having recorded a split with B ol', a mysterious experimental act whose only proof of existence is their presence in said split. A sharp-eyed reader might notice Hexendrone not having the same name on this record. Indeed, the Russians may have wanted to clearly separate both sounds without creating an entirely new project, hence the Hexenoise and Hexendrone entities. Their approach to sludge always noisy and approximative, yet II displays remarkable forethought and composition given the genre. Acoustic drums accompany the slow, intangible Go Home!, giving it structure and giving me something to hold on to while my lungs and head are crushed. A vice made of guitar distortion and bass rumble, feeding into an ever-growing drone, constrict...

Undergrind Metal

Search This Blog