For three years in a row beginning in 2017 the one-man New Jersey death metal band Engulf released EPs.
We caught up to what the band was doing when Engulf released its second EP, 2018’s Gold and Rust (which we premiered), and enthusiastically stayed with it when the third EP Transcend came out the next year (reviewed here).
Andy Synn ended that latter review with a wish:
“Hopefully one day soon we’ll get a comprehensive full-length album from Engulf, as there’s a very good chance it’ll be a modern day classic when we do.”
There was reason to expect that Engulf‘s mastermind Hal Microutsicos was at work on an album when that year-over-year release of EPs stopped, and the months ticked by without something new (granted, those ticking years included the depths of the pandemic).
And at last we do indeed have a debut full-length from Engulf on the far horizon, an album named The Dying Planet Weeps that Everlasting Spew Records will launch on January 12th. To help introduce it, today we’re premiering the second track in the running order, “Bellows From the Aether“.
When our man Andy reviewed that last EP, he wrote: “It’s heavy stuff, obviously, but it’s also smartly structured and darkly dynamic as well, taking its cues from the classic triumvirate of Morbid Angel, Immolation, and Gorguts, and giving them a dash of added dissonance and intensity.”
Those words ring true again in the case of “Bellows From the Aether“, but if anything the song reveals an even darker, more disturbing, and more unorthodox imagination at work.
The programmed drums deliver a vicious battering, the bass slugs hard, and the vocals roar and scream with frightening intensity, but the guitars slowly wail in agonizing tones, boil in seizures of pain, and squirm in seeming desperation, creating an elaborate audio nightmare.
The fretwork is intricate and spins like a kaleidoscope, as does the percussion, constantly changing but constantly adding to the music’s mounting atmosphere of derangement, even as percussive pile-drivers start and stop, clang and clobber, with ruthless force. Kevin Muller of Alluvial also makes a guest appearance, adding to the bestial ferocity in the vocal department.
Kevin Muller isn’t the only guest on the new album. Giacomo Gastaldi of Darkend performed all the bass guitar parts; Aborted‘s Sven de Caluwé and Hideous Divinity‘s Enrico “H.” Di Lorenzo added vocals on other songs; and guitar solos were contributed by Pat Bonvin (Near Death Condition) and Chris Kelly on tracks 6 and 7, respectively.
But of course Hal Microutsicos deserves the lion’s share of the credit, for the songwriting and for performing all the other instrumentation, principal vocals, and drum programming.
Everlasting Spew will release the album on CD, cassette tape, and digital formats in January, with a vinyl edition coming next spring. Credit for the cover art goes to Pär Olofsson. The record is recommended for fans of Hate Eternal, early Gorguts, early Decapitated, and early Ulcerate.
PRE-ORDER:
[PHYSICAL] https://bit.ly/3SwQXsu
[DIGITAL] https://bit.ly/40uXXYP
ENGULF:
https://engulfdm.bandcamp.com/album/subsumed-atrocities
https://www.instagram.com/engulfdm/
https://www.facebook.com/engulfdm/