We’re going to leap right into the music we’re now presenting, and then backfill with some details about who’s responsible for it and the album that includes it.
The song is “Aspirants of Intemperance“, and it is indeed a belligerently intemperate death metal outburst. With little more than a noxious grunt to announce it, the song quickly begins bludgeoning listeners and broiling their brains with squealing, siren-like strings and viciously roiling riffage. The raw madness in the seething and swarming fretwork channels rabid savagery as the rhythm section rapidly jackhammer syour spine and horrific gutturals vent their vitriol.
And there’s more violent lunacy to come, including a freaked-out guitar solo, gut-plundering bass-lines, crazed screams, bursts of jittery and jolting fretwork, weird channel-shifting yowling tones, constant shifts in rhythmic patterns and tempos, and even more macabre vocal howling and roaring. It’s all bizarre and bamboozling, not just gruesome and barbaric but also intricate and elaborate.
So who’s responsible for this fiendishly inventive and audaciously deviant musical malignancy? The answer is the Australian band Pustilence. Originally formed in late 2018 as a trio, they made their recording advent with a 2020 EP named The Birth of the Beginning Before the Inception of the End, which spawned comparisons to the likes of Oppressor, Morta Skuld, Gutted, and Psychic Pawn.
And now they’re returning as a quartet with a debut album, Beliefs of Dead Stargazers and Soothsayers, which includes the song you just heard along with 10 more. It’s set for release in a multitude of formats by the Memento Mori and Rotted Life labels on April 24th (CD from the former, cassette tape from the latter, and a vinyl edition expected from Rotted Life as well). Check the links below for further details.
Just in case you need a further taste of the album to whet your appetite, also please check out the previously released album track “Outwith the Plains of Ultimatum” following the links. It reinforces the impression that these maniacs have serious technical chops, but use those skills not to show off but to get pulses pounding and to vividly create visions of mutilating insanity and supernatural horror.
It also confirms that Pustilence are just as adept at administering brutish musical thuggery as they are spinning heads all the way around through non-stop twists and turns. And as this previous single demonstrates, they even make a role for melody, albeit melodies in this song that are dismal, despondent, and utterly unearthly.
And one last point, which you’ve probably already realized from listing to our premiere: In the production of the album they’ve found a sweet spot between ugly, bone-smashing heaviness and the kind of clarity that permits detailed appreciation for all their instrumental contortions.
MEMENTO MORI:
http://www.memento-mori.es
https://www.facebook.com/memento.mori.label
ROTTED LIFE:
https://www.rottedlife.com
https://www.facebook.com/rottedlife
PUSTILENCE:
https://pustilenceaus.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/pustilenceaus