SHORT BUT SWEET: VIRULENT GENESIS — “INTRODUCTION TO MISRULE”

(Not long ago DGR stumbled across the debut EP of Wyoming-based Virulent Genesis, which was released earlier this month, and it struck a nerve, leading to the review you’ll find below.)

Wyoming’s Virulent Genesis arriveD to us by way of AN internet spelunking trip, part of a collection of ‘oh, that looks interesting’ captured in the great maw that is the review backlog. We could wish to provide a much better origin story, like them crashing into our burnt-out shell of an office by way of meteor, or somehow them fixing the goddamned elevator and finding their way into the lobby, but that isn’t the case.

Sometimes, the stars align just right and you get a wild hair to write about an upstart death metal group based out of Wyoming. That’s the case here with Virulent Genesis‘ first release Introduction To Misrule.

Punching in at a little over eighteen and a half minutes on this release, Virulent Genesis display out of the gate that they’re very competent in the modern form of death metal as it worms its way through the scene, equal parts brutality and as punchy as they can get it, with only one song sailing over the five minute mark. The other four? Two to three and a half minutes; a musical surgical strike that moves as fast as the song lengths suggest without them becoming a full-on grind band – though around these here parts we certainly wouldn’t knock the shift.

The thing to keep in mind with Introduction To Misrule is that it has a lot of the hallmarks of a first release from a newly formed project. The recording has that sort of rumbling, bass-heavy, stomping all over the guitar style of mix while the drums rotate between sounding like someone putting a box of spraypaint cans into a tumble dryer and full-on rifle fire.

It’s got that rough, sandpaper to the side of the head early-album quality that can make death metal fun and equally just as abrasive. It’s not sewage-dwelling so much as it is an angry hornet’s nest right next to the head while trying to sleep. If you’ve ever want to feel like you’re getting in on the ground floor with a band by being launched through the door only to slide across the floor on your face the whole way, Introduction To Misrule has that sort of early feel for the band, wherein each song is its own distinct experiment and what germinates from that is likely going to define the next few steps of their musical career.

Even though “Faltered Pride” takes up a large chunk of the time Virulent Genesis ask of you, where the band actually steal some spotlight for themselves is during the quicker songs that they slammed into the EP. A song like “Necrotic Birth” is very much playing to the far seats of the stadium of a death metal crowd but damn if the sort of constant teeth-baring viciousness that the song maintains isn’t enough to hold interest for a bit.

Virulent Genesis throw in enough melody to lock in interest, but the reality of “Necrotic Birth” is that it’s a serrated knife of a song. With the bass guitar bouncing just above the whole mix as well, it’s hard not seeing Virulent Genesis picking a song like that to run with in the future.

Same could be said for the near-ceaseless ass-beating in “Blight,” wherein the band kicks the crap out of its drum kit for a little under three minutes, or the equally violent “Corporeal Flesh” that closes things out.

While Virulent Genesis don’t quite shake the sense that they’re trying out a handful of approaches to brutality on their Introduction To Misrule release, they’ve definitely got quite a few seeds here that could sprout into some ugly-as-hell and monstrously-tall death metal plant tendrils in the future.

Plus it’s not often a release gets you to torture a metaphor so much you feel like you actually heard it scream by the time you hit a period to end the sentence.

https://virulentgenesis.bandcamp.com/album/introduction-to-misrule
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