DISEMBODIMENT

DISEMBODIMENT's "Mutated Chaos" EP was one of 2021's death metal highlights: a filthy, five-song belch of grotesquery from the mean streets of Sherbrooke, Quebec. Four years on, the band have finally delivered a debut album, and it is absolutely fucking foul. At a time when there is no shortage of killer new death metal bands with growing discographies, "Spiral Crypts" immediately stands out. From its garish, surreal artwork, to the gut-wrenching guitar tone that turns every one of these songs into caustic treacle, this is the unsavory and unacceptable face of modern, old-school death metal. It will make you pull a face. You know the one.

Everlasting Spew Records have a habit of unearthing bands like these. DISEMBODIMENT are rooted in the old school, but impervious to its restrictions. As a result, songs like "Morbid Infestation" effect an amalgam of weirdness and tradition that could provide never-ending possibilities. Presaged by buzzing insects and the sound of someone having a really awful time, it fades purposefully into view, dripping with malevolence, a lavish feast of brutish riffs with hideous, lysergic undertones.

Pregnant with existential dread, these are songs that explore the depths of the mortal soul and the fine line between majesty and madness. The monstrous "Stygian Overture" says it best: "Beneath the shroud of death / A universe unseen / Descend into madness / Where cadavers pile to rest". Whatever is happening in DISEMBODIMENT's lyrical world, it seems to be mirrored by the mutant extremity of the music, which snaps from classic, old-school brutality to slithering, psychedelic sludge in the blink of an eye, leaving behind a bloody snail trail of broken teeth and white-hot bile.

"Spiral Crypts" is full of great moments. From the title track's descent into excruciating, twisted doom, and the short-sharp skull-bash of "Putrification", through to the way that "Larval" slithers out from the depths of somewhere horrendous, soundtracked by evil synths, and then bubbles up like vomit for a serious, caveman death metal clobbering, this is a weird trip with plenty of sights to see. It ends with "Sentient Inorganic Mess": a scurrilous rush of drug-mangled BOLT THROWER riffs and psych-metal needling, it ends with a sample from "The Thing" that could hardly be better suited to DISEMBODIMENT's fetid, sanity-challenging world of abominable death. Excellent work, monsieurs.