Malignant – Purity Through Putrefaction

January 2019 – Maggot Stomp

California has quite the legacy when it comes to death metal, spawning giants from the sand pits of the Mojave in the late 80s/early 90s with names like Exhumed, Terrorizer, Deeds of Flesh or Autopsy. While the legion of behemoths has migrated to greener pastures, there will always be tribute to be paid for those who tread the same sinuous paths – and Malignant have brought a sacrificial lamb to the altar of old-school death metal.

Purity Through Putrefaction may not fully fit the bill, yet with so many OSDM elements it's as if it came out 25 years ago. The vocal performance is even more thrash-leaning than a couple of predecessors, with the same signature airy rasp that defined early harsh vocals – but the lead tones really show the old school sensibilities – scooped mids (and bass), recorded a mile away then turned up, and a healthy dose of whammy abuse. The bass fills clipping did make me wonder whether this was a demo or an EP, but I'm sure it was done in the name of OSDM.

Songwriting isn't anything special, riffs do what they should without going overboard, drummer doesn't do anything too flashy – but Purity Through Putrefaction wasn't written to break the rules. It's a modern ode to the good old days, when death metal was a simpler, rawer affair. Every turn, change of pace and hook is predictable, but in a comforting way – it may be a writhing pile of flesh leaking ugly riffs, but it's mine and I feel at home in its stench. I'd just prefer horror movie clips to the Hollywood soundtrack intro we got.

As a side note, Maggot Stomp released this as their 6^th record, and the first five were all top-notch as well. It's refreshing to witness success stories from such humble beginnings in recent years, and an positive sign for death metal as a whole.

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...

Wormhole – Genesis

Wormhole Genesis - 2016 While Lacerate Enemy Records deserve an entire article for themselves for releasing some of the best slam albums of the last decade, Wormhole's first full-length « Genesis » is worth a review on its own. Released November 30 th 2016, I only came across it a couple of months ago. I clearly missed out, as it not only has the kind of riffs that tickle my eardrums just right, it's also got Duncan Bentley from Vulvodynia on vocals. If that isn't a selling point since Psychosadistic Design (Lacerated Enemy Records – 2016), I don't know what is. Genesis starts out as an average 20XX slam album, reminiscent of Gluttonous Chunks (Inherited Suffering Records – 2016) era Coprocephalic, with memorable grooves and a fun introductory slam. Overall, the flow is controlled and intelligently written, with counterrythms and disorienting fills keeping you on your feet. It's the kind of band during which you'd see a crowd of uncoordinated h...

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