VOMIT FORTH

A horrified ambient intro lets everybody know that something deeply unpleasant is about to start, and swiftly "Seething Malevolence" lives up to its name. Arriving seemingly from nowhere, VOMIT FORTH are a no-nonsense bunch and their debut album echoes that philosophy with 30 minutes of balls-out brutality and occasional creepy interludes. It's a tried and tested formula, but one that never gets old: especially when executed with this degree of swivel-eyed intensity.

Despite being omnipresent for nearly 40 years, death metal undeniably goes through periods of creative stagnation. Right now, the genre is exploding all over again, and bands like VOMIT FORTH are giving the scene a most welcome shot of adrenalin and youthful swagger. Audibly steeped in old-school values but packing a very modern sense of white-knuckle urgency, these are short, vicious and intermittently groovy chunks of sonic violence that whizz by at a breathless pace, leaving a trail of broken necks and shattered teeth in their wake.

"Eucharist Intact" is two minutes of blank-eyed hostility, with shades of brutal slam balanced out by the sheer, thuggish filthiness of the whole thing. A relative epic at four minutes in length, "Unrecognizable" is a glutinous feast of knucklehead grooves and pit-friendly chaos. The title track is a bilious, DEICIDE-like dive into the festering dark, with vocalist Kane Gelaznik channeling multiple demons over a scattershot barrage of dissonant chug. Most effective of all, "Carnivorous Incantation" is a riotous, single shot of classic-adjacent death metal riffs, jarring tempo shifts, off-kilter syncopation and gruesome vocal slurry. It is such a monstrous burst of noise that the dark, disturbing, obsidian drones of "I Feel Nothing" seem relatively soothing in comparison.

Although typified by brief, bloody skirmishes like "Tortured Sacrament" and "Severely Wounded", "Seething Malevolence" does drop a clue or two about the depths of VOMIT FORTH's deathly vision. Both "Predatory Savior" and "Pious Killing Floor" hint at a more adventurous approach, with the latter, in particular, adding some heroic, AUTOPSY-like doom riffs to the band's myopically nasty recipe, before the album concludes with a final, disquieting wave of bubbling, analogue dread. Death metal done properly and with utmost conviction, in other words. Let the vomiting commence.