DRYAD

Major credit to Prosthetic Records for continuing to unearth so many nasty and uncommercial bands. Formed in 2017, DRYAD have released a couple of independent EPs, a split with Missouri black-thrash goons ACID LEATHER and a retrospective compilation, "Anthology", in 2020. Firmly entrenched in the crustiest metal and the most out-there noise-punk, the Iowans made enough of a din to stand out from the underground crowd, landing on a relatively high-profile metal label through sheer force of musical personality. "The Abyssal Plain" is the end result, and it is almost certainly going to give people nightmares.

There is no light or hope in DRYAD's world, and this 35-minute assault confirms it. Largely composed of short, sharp bursts of bug-eyed, snot-encrusted fury, it is as remorseless as it is gnarly. Great fun, in other words.

After a deceptively calm intro, "Bottomfeeder" provides unsuspecting listeners with the first of many slaps around the face. Death metal heavy but raw and untamed in true, extreme punk tradition, it combines rapacious D-beats with amorphous cacophony and frontman Claw's animalistic howls, combining to sound like a runaway juggernaut tearing up a short-cut to the abyss of the album's title. "Trenches" is even more pulverizing: shrouded in ominous reverb but carved from pure, blackened thrash muscle, it's as dense and vicious as REVENGE and as exhilarating as SLAYER at full pelt. "Loki's Castle" repeats the trick, but with even more madness writhing and squirming from within its hostile core. When slithering, synth instrumental "Hadal" subsequently emerges, the brief moment of respite is most welcome.

Although their instincts lead them down a largely myopic tunnel of aggro, DRYAD do have space for dynamics and deviant ideas too. "Pompeii Worm" is a gripping battle between brittle, razor-edged post-punk and all-out sonic violence. "Chimera Monstrosa" harnesses the cinematic and the freeform, wringing hideousness and pomp from both. The title track is an anarchic deluge of blastbeats and hellish screams; "Black Smoke" starts at a doomy pace, before twisting and spiraling into maxed-out oblivion. Another deeply weird instrumental, "Raptures Of The Deep", lays bare this band's debt to a filthy, horror aesthetic, while "Eutrification" is the single most extreme moment herein. The closing "A Nagging Thought" again plumbs the macabre depths of the synthesizer, concluding with some disturbing echoes and resonances. Throughout it all, DRYAD sound collectively lost in a shared moment of painful, putrefied truth. In crust we still trust.