Someday we’ll write about a band we don’t like. Promise. But not today. Today is a day to write about Disfiguring the Goddess. We really like Disfiguring the Goddess. And irresistable cosmic forces dictate that we write about DTG today. Why?
Well, first, earlier this week the band made 3 “new” songs available for free download here. Second, soon after that, following a long hiatus, the nearly perfect Metal Sucks website relaunched the “Completely Unreadable Band Logo of the Week” contest. Check it out here. And guess whose logo they chose to use for the re-launch? Well, I mean that’s the point — you’re supposed to guess. But we’ll save you the trouble. The logo featured on Metal Sucks was a cropped version of the image above, the same one you’ll find on the MySpace page for — Disfiguring the Goddess.
Your superstitious Author decided he could ignore this kind of cosmic alignment only at his peril. Besides, this band deserves our Authorial attention here at NCS. DTG is unsigned. Its only available body of work consists of a 6-song promo EP (available on iTunes), a 4-song demo you can scrounge from net download sites, and a few “vocal videos” on YouTube. And as far as we know, DTG has never performed even a single live show. Yet it has developed a large cult following, largely on the strength of Cameron “Big Chocolate” Argon’s vocal prowess and his ability to create music that’s “outside the box” — which is saying something in a musical genre that’s itself way outside the box. The inimitable Sergeant D has written over at Metal Inquisition that Argon has produced “the most brutal, crushing, guttural slamz on Earth.” Gotta agree.
In its current incarnation, DTG consists of Argon, a real human drummer (ex-Misericordiam blaster Phil Cancilla) instead of the drum machine Argon used on the promo, and guitarist Joe Broodle. But DTG has always been more Argon’s alter ego, individually, than a conventional “band,” and Argon is one interesting dude. Barely out of high school, he’s studying criminal justice at a community college in Huntington Beach, California, he has numerous side projects including a release of experimental electronic/club/trance/house music under the name Big Chocolate, and (to again quote Sergeant D), he’s “quite arguably the best guttural death metal vocalist on the planet.”
Now, back to those 3 “new” DTG songs just made available for download. They’re new in the sense that they haven’t been “officially” available for download before, but they were made more than a year ago. Argon calls 2 of them “silly” and says that none of them represents the current state of DTG’s musical evolution. He and his band-mates are still working on a new full-length and he says the music the band is writing now has “surpassed that shit on multiple levels.” Well then, your Author is even more stoked for the full-length, because the new download is a silly shit-ton of fun.
“Screams of Agony and Ecstasy” seems to be “Teeth of Emultion” under an earlier working name (the latter has been up on DTG’s MySpace page for a while and is included in the 4-song demo you can find on the net). It features Argon’s amazing, deep, slightly distorted guttural vocals, heavy fuzzed-out guitar licks and slams, machine-supplied distorted blast beats, and a noodling synthesizer bar that appears about half-way through the song and reappears intermittently from then til the end. The song definitely has a patchwork quality to it, but it’s nonetheless a fascinating box of extreme ear candy. Then there are the “silly” songs. “Defaced from Humanity” is stylistically similar to “Screams,” with a few more recognizable guitar riffs and a synth line that begins and ends the song. And then there’s “Our Dying Day.” About a minute and a half long, Argon says “i did it as a joke, but it sounds cool.” Yeah, it does — a cacophony of slams and brutal vocals that quickly scrambles your brain and then escapes.
Argon is the first to admit that this 3-song offering is less a new DTG “release” than it is a fleeting, experimental transition from the promo EP to . . . whatever DTG plans to inflict on us in the long-promised full-length. Damned if I can figure out the direction in which these songs are pointing, but like I said, it’s a shit-ton of fun in a genre that sometimes takes itself way too seriously. Go treat yourself.