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And on this chilly morn, we bring you…death!

And a whole lot of it. Two labels, some material of definite interest…and some easily glossed past, mind the gap, move along, there’s nothing to see there.

So with out further ado’ing…shall we dance?

THE SLOW DEATH – Siege (Transcending Obscurity Records) (August 27)

Dreamy, shoegaze inflected, at least one track (“tyranny”) with clean femme vocals…are you sure this is death/doom?

Sure enough, if you hang in past the long, long Winter tempo clean parts and airy, laid back female vox (which follow straight into the next track “famine” and return for “pestilence”?) ROOOOOAAAARRRR in come the death bellow from the depths.

It’s as if someone crossed Giant-era Ahab with their earlier work, then tagged in a heaping helping of Lush just to throw the funeral doom/progressive types.

This was fantastic stuff (and very well produced), though I’ll admit there could have been more of the traditional death/doom bellows than just “ascent of the flames” and half of “famine”. More of a mix may be preferable, though it’s a decidedly mild complaint.

Can you seriously believe this hails from Australia? Well, they also gave us Vanishing Point, so I guess there’s always an outlier or two…

Molasses slow, surprisingly heavy, but all shoegaze dreamy and light at the same time. Hard to pin down, but it comes off so well, who cares?

Top marks, even with that very minor caveat.

 

Oxygen Destroyer – Sinister Monstrosities Spawned By the Unfathomable Ignorance of Humankind (Redefining Darkness Records) (August 27)

Driving, speedy but old school feeling death/thrash act. Production was odd but likeable, with what sounded like a busted drum head on the double bass pata pata tippity pat’ing away right up front throughout and guitars that were mixed just at the right level despite a bit of a raw, trebly hiss to the final production.

It’s not really “good production” in the proper sense, but veers more towards Scott Burns territory than the usual ear-challenging noise or everything up front at once of the ProTools school. I’ll give it a thumbs up just on that measure, it certainly came close to nabbing the brass ring before falling short into the aforementioned weird kinks.

Vox are rabid, like someone crossed Mille Petrozza with the guy from Morbid Saint or Dr. Shrinker. Wasn’t too fond of ’em, but given how many decades of play those first four Kreator albums (and several EPs of the era) have gotten, it’s close enough to a hydrophobic Pleasure to Kill to lean more towards acceptance.

Otherwise, if you dig “evil sounding” old thrash mixed with the approach of also ran third stringers like Solstice, Raped Ape, Infernal Majesty and Ripping Corpse, you should be very happy here.

There’s definitely enough of a proper old school (non-Bay Area, non-Teutonic) thrash sound being thrown down here to merit at least a thumbs up, and only moreso given the close but a bit off production.

We were good with this, yeah.

Perilaxe Occlusion – Raytraces of Death 12″ MLP (Blood Harvest) (August 6)
Perilaxe Occlusion – Exponential Decay 12″ MLP (Blood Harvest) (April 30)

Remember the Crawl EP, at times appended to Clandestine as bonus tracks? The one with Orvar from Nirvana 2002 on it, especially noticeable on “bitter loss”?

Well, that’s almost exactly what this Toronto duo sounds like, right down to the patented HM-2 buzzsaw guitar tone.

Exponential Decay is their debut EP, and while perhaps a tad more aggressive, doesn’t fare so well as Raytraces of Death, which bears far superior production and more focus on those weird ass double tracked but maybe not vox.

Hey, I always thought “premature autopsy” was the best Entombed track after “left hand path” and feel Deicide lost a lot of appeal after Benton got his panties in a bunch about using harmonizers so often on the first album, so you know I dug this one.

But definitely stick to Raytraces unless you’re seriously hooked.

Blood Spore / Coagulate / Soul Devourment / Gutvoid (split LP) (Blood Harvest) (May 14)

Blood Spore took part in another four way split last year in which Vivisect came out the only relative “winner”, and what they’re offering here doesn’t exactly improve on that.  It’s at best average, but too aimlessly lollygagging to ever decide which side of the fence it wants to be on. Another stinker from these goofballs.

Coagulate just sounds really unprofessional, like a basement rehearsal track caught on demo. Those noisy tinny punk drums leave a strangely echoing snare and weirdly dull cymbal sound throughout, while the vomit vox, probably fine under normal production, really stick out and sound kinda…odd, like you were catching these guys at the local VFW hall or some shit. It’s less about how good or bad their track is, and more about how low rent it comes off in the end. “Tonight! Spaghetti dinner and a performance from Coagulate! Beers 50c!”

oy, there’s more? Yep, looks like we still have to struggle our way through Soul Devourment, with that silly stiff riff and snare pattern around the 1:45 mark. Almost picture a bunch of MAGA Karens trying to dance with that perpetual stick up their ass they all bear, it’s that stiff and ridiculous…

Gutvoid, we’d covered for Astral Bestiary that same month, and whew. Sounds like they’d borne minor elements of actual prog/doom ala Ahab, but flushed all that down the crapper by leaning hard on the black/death throttle and the usual ill fitting vox conundrum. So not expecting much…boy, was this a nice surprise!

When it gets heavier and faster, it’s very much death metal (period), slowing down to a sort of detuned stoner/sludge riffing that goes straight into a more contemplative, doomy territory by the end of the track. Much, much better this time around!

So once again for one of these Blood Harvest 4 way splits, there’s only one decent track in the end…but what’s interesting is that it came from a band who failed so miserably last time around.

Definitely check out that Gutvoid track, it’s an amazing improvement.

The rest, pfft.

Universally Estranged – Reared Up in Spectral Predation CD/LP/TAPE (Blood Harvest) (April 30)

What would you get if you crossed Mortician, Autopsy and Key-era Nocturnus?

A big fucking mess, yeah. But we can put a name on this. Universally Estranged.

So these guys are working the SF schtick of Nocturnus (or Scanner, or Voivod, or perhaps even Pestilence for that matter), complete with little keyboard stings and ambient tracks to make this feel all Mass Effect. But then their go to is detuned guitars and cavernous vomit vox…which they rather bizarrely put to the service of a somewhat busy Nocturnuslike tech death riffing.

Say huh? Who ever associated the crispness of futurism and outer space exploration with the sloppy Non Fiction sound of overly detuned guitar strings and mids heavy distortion?

And why?

Credits more for the concept than the execution. It’s certainly listenable, but you’d really expect something like this to be crisp, wild, dangerous, even.

The sub-stoner rock vibe the mids and detuned guitars give off utterly ruin any sense of shiny starships and sinister space monsters they were trying to pull in otherwise, making this a definite fail.

An interesting one, to be sure. Hell, even a listenable one.

But a good swing and a miss does not equate to a score by anyone’s estimation.

Tweak a few things and come back. Some polish and sheen, you may have something estimable on your hands next time around.

Gastric Phantasm – S/T TAPE (Blood Harvest) (May 14)

Back when I was scoring some killer demo compilations and EP only band CD rescues from Necroharmonic on the cheap, there was really only one band Roy’d put out that I just couldn’t fathom any reason for: Phlegm.

They were a sort of Autopsy/Incantationesque grindcore act with a decidedly lowbrow bent, and whatever riffs they brought to the table tended to be subsumed in overly long, poorly recorded opuses of sheer boredom. You might overestimate them in a cursory skim (oh, this sounds like fill in the blank, it’s not so bad!), but taken as a whole…it gets really boring, really fast.

Such is the case with Gastric Phantasm, who in a mere four tracks left yours truly with eyes drifting towards the clock, shuffling feet, thinking on other things and wondering when the hell this thing was going to finally end.

Detuned guitars, noisy, spastic rehearsal drums and vomit vox, but the most exciting things get is on the evil sounding “malevolent death rite”, which is no great shakes in and of itself.

Consider ’em an also ran. You may find yourself desperate enough to give a listen or two, but I wouldn’t suggest it until you’ve worn out other, far superior possibilities.

Snet – Mokvání V Okovech CD/LP (Blood Harvest) (May 14)

Prague based death metal of the Asphyx/Autopsy/Incantation school (though appending far closer to Asphyx than the others).

As you may expect, it’s low, slow and grinding, with throat ripping rasp vox and leads so simple and laid back you’d think this was My First Guitar Lesson. Hey, it’s a niche.

But then the riffs get a bit busier, a tad more sinister sounding, almost leaning towards Grotesque territory on tracks like “demon”…it’s interesting stuff, to be sure.

Like many of their peers East of the former Iron Curtain, there’s an insularity, a weirdness to this that sets them apart from more traditional Western tropes. Think about it, do Root sound anything like Tormentor, or Masters Hammer? Those are some bizarre bands…but we all love them for their very weirdness.

I’d say Snet are case in point, not only no exception to the rule, but very much a go to marker of same in and of themselves.

Good stuff, and odd enough to make the listener take notice.