AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): DISGUSTULENT — “LOD”

You can guess from this Vancouver trio’s name that creating shiny and seductive music is not their mission. Instead, what you’ll encounter on their debut EP LOD is death metal of a particularly crushing, manic, and mind-mangling variety. But it would go too far to claim that their music is nothing but foul and fetid malignancy and decay, which might be another conclusion you leap to in considering their name. Vicious and voracious it is, but it’s strikingly dynamic and equally capable of creating head-spinning spectacles.

Though the EP you’re about to hear is Disgustulent‘s debut release, it doesn’t sound like anyone’s first effort, and indeed the band’s members have already made their marks in other formations, with guitarist/vocalist Vitharr and bassist Shawn Hillman also having performed as members of SVNEATR and drummer/vocalist Taylor McDonald lending his talents to Death Machine, Blackwater Burial, and Cranial Fungus.

They chose the name Disgustulent, by the way, from a Cerebral Rot song called “Crowning the Disgustulent”. And in its lyrical themes this first EP is based on the world and lore of Diablo (specifically Diablo 2).

Photo by Savannah Bagshaw

Well, we might stop there in providing a preview of LOD, which we’re about to premiere in its totality, but seeing as how there’s only three tracks on the list, let’s take them one at a time.

The opener “Tomb of Tal-Rasha” melds together brazen chords and blistering fretwork-seizures, ruthlessly battering drumwork, a tandem of rabid howls and monstrous roars, and quivering tendrils of exotic melody that add to the song’s infernal atmosphere.

The song stomps and staggers, chilling the blood, and it convulses in bursts of jittering and writhing fretwork and asylum-quality vocal expulsions that render madness and mayhem in frightening terms, but there’s also something ecstatically glorious in the head-spinning guitar display that closes the track.

Up next is “Rotting Maw of Mephisto“, and while the title signals rottenness, what you’ll get at first is an absolute blizzard of fast-moving guitar insanity and riotous percussive assaults. Sounds of disease do permeate this adrenaline-fueled attack through worm-like riffage and the kind of berserk string-frenzies and screaming solos that spawn visions of viral conflagration.

Jaw-dropping chaos reigns in “Rotting Maw…“, but the band again switch things up, causing the music to stalk like a hideous beast while they spin up another swirling, darting, and spiraling guitar extravaganza, which is both frighteningly otherworldly and downright glorious.

And finally, with “Lord of Destruction” the band indulge their more palpably gruesome interests in a song that moves like a hulking monstrosity. The drumming still smacks the skull, but the music groans and oozes pustulant foulness and quivering misery.

Yet here again this trio prove the dynamism of their songwriting, interweaving eerily squirming melodies, kicking up the pace in order to afflict the sense with sounds of full-blown dementia (including another white-hot solo), and also slowing the momentum into another ghastly stomp in which the music seeps a thick sonic ichor of suppurating gloom and then dismally drags its way to a hopeless end.

 

 

 

LOD is scheduled for digital release on February 24th. Editing, vocal tracking, mixing, and mastering were done by Ryan Shepard, with instrument tracking by Disgustulent. The EP features logo and cover artwork by Basia Swieczko. It’s recommended for fans of Morbid Angel, Undeath, Hooded Menace, Cerebral Rot, and Spectral Voice.

BANDCAMP:
https://disgustulent.bandcamp.com/releases

FACEBOOK:
https://www.facebook.com/disgustulent