Well call me Carrie and drench me in Pigs Blood! Well don’t actually, as I have been there. Not the telekinetic, wrecking the school prom side of things but the being coated in foul smelling ichor. Whilst I have been listening to this album said drenchers Watain announced their first show in ages and I made the mistake of watching Julia Ducournau’s film Raw. It would seem there is no escaping the animal claret and musically it is just as foul as the horrible stuff which should only ever exist in one place, inside a pig.
Whether this US band including members of Protestant and Prezir (whose new release has also just gone out for review) cover themselves in the rank blood of swine before going on stage is unknown, if they have any sense they won’t and I am sure it is difficult playing this sort of fast and vicious slaughterhouse death with fingers all sticky and slippery with offal. Actually there’s all type of death going on here, perhaps not the melodic kind but everything from totally brutal, through to gore grind, that old stygian clamour that gets categorised as metal ov death by some and even the sort of bestial war metal fast slaying of the guitar scale runs likened by bands such as Revenge and Deiphago. Listening to this exercise of ‘Misanthrope Absolute’ is not the easiest task unless you really love a battering over the head with a club style this often resembles. Even though the album is only around the 36 minute mark it’s going to hurt you playing it from beginning to end.
Some of the titles say it all. ‘Taste The Fucking Poison’ for instance goes all Jim Jones on the imagination and Rats (The World Is A Fucking Sewer) speaks of total hatred and misanthropy against the human race. Having been sent this on disc the artwork is just as vicious, spiked clubs with balls on chains adorn it, there is a corpse (possibly headless) laid on the slab on the back cover with the word ‘War’ carved on its torso and the actual CD and inlay has a ghastly death scene tableaux where my brain simply cannot work out the exact grotesquery its depicting.
It’s not all full on slay with speed that aforementioned Guyana clad massacre number oozes out with horrifying sluggish stealth and crawls in an incessant fashion with vocals gurgling in a thick tarry fashion. Ugh, yes this album is full of moments that make you want to take a shower in bleach and try and scrub the sickness away. It’s definitely not an album to dissect on a track by track basis, I think you should already have a clear idea that this is death metal that lurks in the very sewer of the genre. There’s not the slightest thing I can say about it that is pleasant and for that the quartet of thugs behind this hellish noise should be commended. If your idea of fun is recreating a Viennese Actionism party then you have a perfect soundtrack here, otherwise run away!
(7.5/10 Pete Woods)
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