REVIEW: PRIMITIVE MAN - SCORN

While “man” be in the name of recent Relapse-signee Primitive Man, this music sounds like it was created by a malevolent force of nature, not just mortals with a mean streak. With members from Clinging To The Trees of A Forest Fire and Reproacher, this Denver, CO outfit have the credentials and gut-churning aggression to turn heads and cave skulls in the extreme metal community until the world cracks beneath the power of Jonathan Campos’ bass. The suffocating doom of Scorn, their first full-length set to be re-released by Relapse in August, sounds like the roar of all the earth’s mud and crude oil bubbling with rage, prepared to swallow us whole.

This album is one of the most unpleasant and downright frightening listening experiences of the year, crawling forward like an ancient beast pressing its muzzle to the ground to scavenge fields of bones and pooled blood. Opening with the album’s namesake, “Scorn” launches into tortured sludge that salivates on the border of funeral doom, invoking the misanthropy of Bongripper and the sluggish menace of Oak. While there’s definitely a monochromatic element to some of their pieces, like in “Antietam” and “Rags,” the album still mines the full spectrum of sound for texture. From jangly dissonance (“Scorn”) to challenging sound collages and atmospheric creepiness (“I Can’t Forget” and “Black Smoke”) and uptempo bursts of crust (“Stretched Thin” and “Astral Sleep”), Primitive Man possess a lot of knowledge about what nightmares are made of, and how to haunt you with them.

While doom bands often live and die by the enormity of their riffs, the strong drumming of Isidro Soto and Ethan Lee McCarthy’s hope-shredding vocals truly propel Scorn to full momentum. McCarthy sounds like the raspy snarl of that previously mentioned scavenging beast, broadcast through the thick static of a ham radio. Primitive Man may not write especially memorable songs when examined individually, but the album creates a dense, unforgettable experience that feels like you’re drowning in prehistoric tar pits, flanked by the preserved carcasses of mammoths and cavemen alike. Scorn is intense, primal, and would tunnel through the earth just to watch it implode on itself.

As mentioned before, parts of this album certainly plod and if you’re an impatient listener you may not fully appreciate the vastness of Scorn’s bleak sound, but if you’re a fan of slow-burn doom titans like Sunn O))) and Ufomammut and don’t mind a chaser of cold black bile, Primitive Man is ready to rip your day in half and fill it with riffs that could scrape the skin and religion off a dying priest.

Relapse releases Scorn on August 20th, and Primitive Man is currently touring  Go to their official website here for tour dates and merch:  http://primitivemandoom.com/

And check them out on Facebook to stay current with all band-related news:  https://www.facebook.com/primitivemandoom

REVIEW: EXHUMED - NECROCRACY

I bought Gore Metal from a little tattoo shop that carried Relapse releases due to the success of local deathheads Skinless. I was a freshman in high school and more curious than passionate about death metal. If you know someone who’s on the fence about extreme music one of the most persuasive things you can do is have them listen to a few songs written by Matt Harvey. As a Mets fan I will clarify: The founder of Exhumed, not the All-Star pitcher/nude model of the same name.

Exhumed again triumphs over significant lineup changes, this time welcoming back past-bassist Bud Burke as a guitarist. While the supporting cast is formidable (especially Mike Hamilton, also of Deeds of Flesh), this is a horrorshow that always hinged on the performance of its founder. Always honest about the pop song structures of his blood-drenched compositions, Harvey has understands the power of a good (meat)hook. On their newest release, Necrocracy, Exhumed display the melodic tendencies of Anatomy Is Destiny, the tight songwriting of Slaughtercult and All Guts, No Glory, and the sheer brutality of Gore Metal. We hear all the time that bands are borrowing elements from their entire discography while working towards a sound that’s entirely new, and 90% of the time it’s a load of zombie shit. But Necrocracy is not zombie shit; it’s looking backwards at their history of jubilant bloodshed, then stepping forward.

Kicking off with “Coins Upon the Eyes,” Exhumed blast into their dual growl/snarl attack and deliver the first memorable chorus on the album, hinting where vocal melody might exist if this wasn’t death metal. Other memorable hooks include “Dysmorphic,” which features a Carcass-esque groove fit for a marauding gang of re-animated bikers, and “The Shape of Deaths To Come,” a slick powerhouse song that throws razor sharp At the Gates riffs into the cannibalistic fray. Fans who are particularly hungry for bile-puking grind will devour “Sickened” and “Carrion Call,” which could both chainsaw-duel classics like “Necromaniac” and “Limb From Limb” for supremacy. The album closes strongly with “The Rotting,” with riffs that carve flesh from the bone before settling into a mid-tempo prowl and fading thrash.

I even hesitate to mention this, but I also noticed how similar a few songs felt to the most intense moments of Cradle of Filth’s Midian. From the abyss-scraping growl to the higher-pitched shrieks and the muscular mid-tempo guitarwork, I was just amazed at how comparable elements can deviate due to the direction of one visionary participant (Matt Harvey/Dani Filth). That isn’t saying Exhumed will end up writing songs about mysterious pale women exploring their bloodlusts in foggy woodlands, it’s just interesting how metal can intersect and then speed away from itself.

Like always, Exhumed have a great balance of catchy and disciplined songwriting, brutal technicality, and a macabre sense of fun that continues to scratch, claw, and feast their way to the top of the death metal food chain. This album proves once again that Californian death metal is as mean and nasty as the best examples from any other location, because the constant sun makes the corpses rot faster.

Necrocracy comes out in North America on August 6th, so save your lunch money, creeps. For more info on the band (including merch and upcoming tour dates with Dying Fetus), check out their page at Relapse Records: http://www.relapse.com/label/artist/exhumed.html

And if you want to yell at me for the Cradle of Filth comparison feel free to send me angry Tweets (@MisterGrowl) or hate mails (mistergrowlblog (at) gmail (dot com)).

REVIEW: MUMAKIL - FLIES WILL STARVE

So I learned a lot this morning by deciding to review Mumakil’s upcoming album Flies Will Starve today. First, they’re named after a fictional Tolkien beast, those six-tusked two-hundred feet tall elephant creatures who royally fuck shit up in Return of the King. I found a poem written about one by Samwise the Hobbit and he has a totally amateur grasp of poetic forms and rhyme schemes, incapable of capturing their enormous fury the way this band has. I then researched the life cycle of flies and discovered that most don’t live for more than a month, and can starve after just a few days. This confirmed my disdain for these pesky little jerks for buzzing around my eyeballs during the summer, as if they have nothing better to do with their thirty days on this planet.

The members of Mumakil use their time alive with a higher purpose: Blistering their fingers and snapping your neck with ferocious grind that will pry your ear canal open and funnel in anthrax. From the confident first blast of “Death From Below” you can tell this ain’t Mumakil’s first ride at the rodeo. They’ve been assaulting the world from their Swiss lair in Geneva since 2004, releasing several split albums and three full-lengths, including Flies Will Starve, their second with Relapse Records. They have used every moment of the past nine years conceiving ways to injure you with the sound screaming from their amplifiers and off their percussive devices. With 24 tracks it would require a manifesto of Tolkien proportions to accurately describe all of the lethal techniques used on this monster, but some highlights of their multi-faceted attack include: The stop’n’start trauma of “War Therapist,” the thrashing groove of “Waste By Definition,” and the technical death wizardry of “Fucktards Parade.” There’s definitely more than a pinch of tech-death here, as the riffs often have as much in common with Nile or Decapitated as they do label-mates Brutal Truth or Rotten Sound. But Mumakil really is its own (six-tusked) animal.

This is the catchiest blast of 200+ BPM sonic anger I’ve heard in an elephant’s age. Elephants live a long time, right? About a billion times longer than flies? My lazy internet searches and lazier math confirm this is true. It’s just exciting to hear a band building grind on riffs rather than blastbeats (but if it’s blastbeats you want, good lord, does Kevin Foley not disappoint you) and actually forming these crazy things called songs. Somewhere along the way, a group of near-sighted people obsessed with guidelines and mind-numbing consistency decided there were rules for grindcore, and those rules are only allowed to be broken if you increase the average song speed by X amount. By its nature, grindcore is a genre that should be forever evolving, restlessly searching for new weapons. Thankfully, all of the bands worth a damn took that rule book, said “No thanks” as impolitely as possible, and set it ablaze with a mouth full of bathtub bourbon and a lit Molotov. They may not challenge perceptions of grindcore (and reality) as defiantly as someone like Pig Destroyer, but Mumakil is absolutely one of those bands.

This album releases in late June, right around my birthday. This will definitely be spinning while I blow out my cake candles, lit from the same burning grindcore rulebook.

Check out more information on Mumakil over at their profile on Relapse Records, including how t pre-order this beast:  http://www.relapse.com/label/artist/mumakil.html

And follow them on Facebook here:  https://www.facebook.com/Mumakil

REVIEW: COUGH / WINDHAND SPLIT (REFLECTION OF THE NEGATIVE)

Reflections of the Negative features two colossal doom bands from Richmond, VA, both on Relapse Records. I just listened to this split album a couple times on repeat and I’m pretty sure the music impregnated me and a baby demon is now forming in some egg of sulphur in my tummy. Not gonna be fun shitting that out, but this split was totally worth the future discomfort.

The opening of Cough’s 18 minute track, “Athame,” sounds eerily similar to the music created by the coven of black-toothed witches in The Lord of Salem, a film I found tedious and completely uninspiring. This song, which plods defiantly into oblivion for nine minutes before switching gears into an even more unpleasant circle of hell, features more suspense and chills then that film mustered in 101 minutes. The connection to witchcraft isn’t just a convenient bridge into mentioning my recent film reviews either, as an “athame” is a ceremonial dagger used in many neopagan witchcraft traditions. Like the dagger, the percussion cuts through the suffocating fog of black smoke just enough for Parker Chandler’s strangled vocals to sneak through the forest of briars. Halfway through the song, when the lyrics announce “the time has come for sacrifice,” you can picture a procession of hooded figures lead by a single dying lantern flame to a black altar crafted from burnt bones and warped wood. The droning chant, soaked with reverb and haunted to the core, accompanies pummeling drums that rejoin the heavy groove of the main riff leading into the thirteenth minute. It’s all entirely captivating, a testament to the power of one ungodly riff and a whole lot of phantasmal atmosphere. Try listening to this in some woodlands after dusk without something dead rising from the rotten leaves and muck.

As the album’s chaser, Windhand is the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down, if the medicine is actually laced with the blood of a leprous monk and poison sumac. The riffs are similarly massive and leaden, but while Cough just try to get through the woods alive, Windhand seem to have found the safest clearing and stroll there a little bit. Sure, they’re surrounded by the skeletons of ill-fated travelers, but the way the light bounces off their skulls and femurs is kinda pretty at this hour. “Shepherd’s Crook” features some soaring lead guitar and Dorthia Cottrell’s vocals wind between the pine trees to awaken some ancient evil. But of the two songs “Amaranth” leaves the largest impression in the mud, with resourceful drumming from Ryan Wolfe powering the attack. it turns out that Amaranth is a blossoming weed that has symbolized immortality reaching back to early Greek mythology. Windhand’s music is similarly everlasting, as you can find roots of this music in ancient incantations and the rawest forms of blues. Both of these bands show up at the top of their form on this split, making it essential listening for fans of doom, sludge, or extreme occult rock. When that demon egg hatches I’m gonna name it Coughand, and this album will be his lullaby.

Listen to the album over at Bandcamp and feel the black magic consume you:  http://coughwindhand.bandcamp.com/album/reflection-of-the-negative

And order the beautiful vinyl LP from Relapse over at:  http://www.relapse.com/label/catalog/product/view/id/83006/s/reflection-of-the-negative-lp-white-and-black-splatter/category/52/