LARCENIA ROE

Even at its transformative best, deathcore can seem like a competitive sport. Every band wants to be the heaviest, the fastest, the most brutal, or the most willfully fucked-up. And every deathcore vocalist wants to push their chosen discipline even further into the realms of insanity. On his band's debut full-length, LARCENIA ROE frontman Ryan Vail makes noises that human beings really should not be able to make. Much like LORNA SHORE's Will Ramos and PALEFACE SWISS frontman Marc Zellweger, Vail is taking the art of extreme vocals into previously uncharted territory, with a dizzying array of voices and vocal cord perversions at his disposal. "Extraction" is remarkable for more reasons than just the singer's seemingly inhuman talents, but there is no denying that the first thing that hits the listener when opener "TEETH" begins is the sound of one man apparently inhaling a swarm of locusts and then choke-puking them back out, with a mouth full of maggots and razorblades. Throughout this deeply unpleasant and darkly addictive record, LARCENIA ROE keep the insane vocals and other assorted horrors coming. If deathcore is a competitive sport, then these sick fucks are winning.

From its bilious cover image of a particularly intricate dental procedure to the constant barrage of animal howls and sulphureous belches emanating from Ryan Vail, "Extraction" is designed to disgust. But rather than descend into some enervating gore-fest, LARCENIA ROE have written a debut album that hums and fizzes with ingenuity, and that dances to an abominable, mutant tune: the essence of deathcore reborn as something far more horrifying and unpredictable. As is traditional in this scene, "Extraction" is peppered with guest appearances from other unsavory protagonists, including CHELSEA GRIN's Alex Koehler and VULVODYNIA's Lwandile Prusent, but this band's warped personality dominates. The riffs churn and suffocate, the rhythm section hammers away with near-robotic precision, and the air is full of treacly static and noirish electro-blips, as if another, machine-driven version of LARCENIA ROE is operating simultaneously beneath the radar. It is all extremely odd, in the best possible way.

Songs like "Calcium Closet" (featuring Koehler) and "Eggy Mess" (featuring Prusent) are tightly coiled bursts of sledgehammer deathcore that have major psychological issues and a death wish. This is ugly, frantic music that strikes at the heart of what makes this genre so addictive in the first place. Recent single "Lip Split" is a riveting example of what the North Carolina slam-squad are cultivating here. Gleefully atonal and obnoxious, it flits from gruesome riff to gruesome riff, becoming more and more fetid and foul with every counterintuitive change of rhythm or pace. Despite it all, "Lip Split" is weirdly catchy too. Therein lies the key to "Extraction" and the inevitable success coming LARCENIA ROE's way. This is vicious, offal-soaked deathcore, contorted into alien shapes and smothered in chaos, with some of the most preposterously extreme vocals ever committed to tape. The horror is real and it slams. And people are going to go apeshit for it.