SANGUISUGABOGG

There is no need to forget everything you know about SANGUISUGABOGG, but it might be time to make a few adjustments to their reputation. When they first emerged, these Ohio outlaws made it plain that they would use (often bad taste) humor as a weapon, as showcased on the likes of "Dead as Shit" and "Dick Filet" from 2021 debut "Tortured Whole" (the title of which is, in itself, an unsavory pun). Two years later, "Homicidal Ecstasy" took a few steps into more cerebral death metal territory, but with songs like "Face Ripped Off" and "Necrosexual Deviant" still hinting at a slight lack of seriousness. Admittedly, the band's music became an increasingly serious matter during that time: SANGUISUGABOGG have been a monstrous, destructive death metal force from the start, with a sound that twists caveman brutality into ugly, new shapes, and a vocalist, Devin Swank, whose abyssal growls have old-school DNA etched into their throat-rending façade.

But on album number three, the transition is complete. The heaviest and most punishing album they have made so far, "Hideous Aftermath" eschews the lobotomized simplicity of SANGUISUGABOGG's earlier works in favor of dark, dastardly death metal that has more in common with INCANTATION and CANNIBAL CORPSE than it does with any of their new breed peers. An obscene pile-up of caustic riffs and bone-snapping grooves, "Hideous Aftermath" is the first album the band has made that transcends the goofiness of their unreadable logo and turns these miscreants into modern masters.

The first thing that hits is the production. Fatter, nastier and more tangibly untamed than any of its predecessors, "Hideous Aftermath" sounds phenomenal, and, mercifully, doesn't have snare drums that sound like someone whacking a beer keg with a bat. From the opening onslaught of "Rotted Entanglement" onwards, SANGUISUGABOGG are on a mission to back up their much-feted heaviness with the imagination and creativity it deserves. There are still countless moments that will lower your IQ, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but most of these songs have imagination and real, chewable substance. "Repulsive Demise" is a key moment: lethally slow and grim, it rumbles and ravages with stoic, bug-eyed determination, oozing atmosphere and vitriol in equal quantities. It is followed by "Erotic Beheading", which along with its stridently perverted title, delivers another gripping, slow-motion battering that is brilliantly sickly and suffocating, until it erupts into bursts of horrified blasting. SANGUISUGABOGG will never be a band that relies too much on dynamics, but both of these songs have shrewd changes of pace and miniature breakdowns that deftly set up the next assault. Call it immature, call it stupid, call it anything you like, because it fucking crushes.

Elsewhere, "Hideous Aftermath" is straightforwardly thrilling in a way that most of death metal's fresh, 21st century figureheads would love to emulate. "Felony Abuse of a Corpse" and "Abhorrent Contraception" are tailormade to send circle-pits spinning, albeit with a few jarring tempo shifts. "Semi-Automatic Facial Reconstruction" is a twitching, scalpel-wielding riot, with a schizophrenic structure that refuses to resist its most extreme impulses. Likewise, the marathon maiming of "Paid in Flesh" is partly focused on violence and partly on churning up the sonic soil like an out-of-control harvester with a short attention span. Somehow it all works. SANGUISUGABOGG are sounding more and more like death metal heavyweights, and "Hideous Aftermath" is a deep and deeply rewarding listen, with just enough puke-inducing obnoxiousness to keep everything on the right (i.e. wrong) side of sensible. The logo is still very funny, mind you.