AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THE PLAGUE — “HACKED AND BUTCHERED”

Hailing from Sydney, Australia, The Plague erupted from cemetery earth in 2017 with a debut EP appropriately named Mass Genocide, and then honed their grisly blades with live performances in support of such bands as Angelcorpse, Master, Entombed AD, and Ensiferum (among many others).

Time passed and in 2021 Bitter Loss Records released the band’s debut album Within Death. As we wrote around that time, on the occasion of a premiere:

The music of this full-length debut does indeed live within death — death metal of the old school to be precise, of a particularly mauling and murderous, gruesome and ghastly variety. Powered by that beloved chainsawing guitar distortion, propelled by bone-smashing drumwork, and elevated into rarified air by truly astonishing vocal madness, The Plague‘s music is electrifying. We have little doubt that (as the advance press claims) it will strongly appeal to fans of classic Dismember and Entombed as well as more recent entrants such as LIK and Entrails.

And now The Plague return again, on the other side of a real-world plague, with a second album named Erosion of Gods, which will be released on October 28th by Brilliant Emperor Records. And once again we have the ghoulish pleasure of premiering a song from the album, along with a gore-soaked video-tale of hideous torture and cannibalism.

The music of “Hacked and Butchered“, like the song’s title and the video that comes with it, is a very gnarly and nasty piece of work. It’s also a nasty stew of aural contrasts and complements.

The bass rumbles and slugs from subterranean depths, and the chainsawing riffs sometimes sound like they’re cutting through concrete. On the other hand, the lead guitar whines and whirs in a semblance of frenzied madness, and the vocals, which are never lower than a gurgling howl, rocket high into truly blood-curdling screams that go on and on.

The pacing and mood of the music also create contrasts. The drums begin in a head-hammering gallop while the riffing rabidly writhes and sears, but eventually things get a hell of a lot more gruesome. The tempo turns into a lurching stomp, the bass heavily throbs, and the guitars sound abysmally diseased — a ghastly interlude before a final surge of violent madness and one last protracted scream.

While you try to mend your bones and gather your blood-slicked innards back inside you after that experience, we’ll share a comment about the song from vocalist Mike:

I think the title pretty much speaks for itself, I was watching a lot of documentaries and reading articles about cannibalism at the time and thought a song in that vein would be very fitting for the album. I enjoy stories about horror and the macabre so I wrote some words to provoke thoughts about that subject. The song is about hacking and butchering a human being and eating them, an unpleasant occurrence but it happens nonetheless.

As for the album as a whole, the band preview it with these words:

“They have cursed our Earth, believing lies since birth. Wipe out false beliefs. Gods erode away. No more shall we worship; we will cast them down. The time has come for the Gods to erode. Burn the scriptures and revolt against their tyranny. Eradicate their existence from this Earth…”

True to that thematic preview, the album is a ferocious onslaught, mangling and mauling in the extreme, but is equally striking in depicting the ghastly results of all the slaughtering. If you want further proof, have a listen below to the short sharp shock of the album’s first single, “Impulsive Convulsions“. And get yourself in line for pre-orders!

PRE-ORDER:
https://brilliantemperor.bandcamp.com/album/erosion-of-gods
https://brilliantemperor.bigcartel.com/

THE PLAGUE:
https://theplague-au.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/theplagueaus
https://www.facebook.com/ThePlagueAustralia/