The origins of the word troglodyte date back to antiquity, where it was used by ancient Greek and Roman geographers and historians to refer to primitive cave-dwellers in different regions. Over time, of course, it has also been used to refer to any people “characterized by reclusive habits or outmoded or reactionary attitudes”.
The New Jersey death metal band TROG probably had their tongues in their cheeks when they chose that name. (When the band originally formed in 2019 the name they used was Troglorot, which obviously incorporated some other connotations too). On its face, the name suggests primitive caveman death metal, the kind that sounds like grunting hulks brutishly banging rocks together.
But even their first EP, Of Vomit Reborn, made clear that this wasn’t really what they were up to. Their debut album Horrors Beyond, which we’re premiering in full today on the eve of its June 28 release, makes that even more apparent, and no one with ears to hear would ever characterize the music as a reflection of “outmoded or reactionary attitudes” — far from it.
You could probably deduce that just from looking at the band’s lineup and what they’ve done elsewhere. It includes guitarist TJ Coon (Sentient Horror), drummer Hudson Barth (Reeking Aura), guitarist/bassist Dan Erdenberger (ex-Cypher Seer), and vocalist Pete Colucci (Apocrophex, Gukurahundi).
For sure, the new album is well-named, and the grotesque cover art well-chosen, because lyrically the songs tell elaborate tales of hideous fantasy, narrating such events as the entombment of the world in putrid molten bone and marrow; intertwining wormholes leaking death and “vibrating at the frequency of lobotomized fiends”; gruesome reanimation rituals; interdimensional organ trafficking; and the methodical obliteration of advanced ancient civilizations.
A twisted imagination runs rampant through the words (not troglodytic at all), and there’s a twisted imagination at work in the music too, far more elaborate and multi-faceted than you might guess from the band’s name.
It’s a compact album, with seven songs and a total runtime of about 34 minutes. And to be clear, TROG‘s name isn’t entirely a head-fake, because they do indulge in the kind of brutish clubbing that we imagine was the pastime of our cave-dwelling forebears. But from the first minute of the first song (“Deluge of Skulls“) TROG signal that their interests and ambitions also run in other directions.
In that first minute a gently musing acoustic melody rings, picked up by the electric guitar and carried forward in mesmerizing yet more distressing fashion. And then TROG begin the bludgeoning in earnest — inflicting a high-speed battering accompanied by rapidly writhing tremolo’d riffing and gargantuan growls. From there, the rhythm section thunder and gallop, notes throb and dart, a delirious solo spurts out, the vocals howl and scream (doubled for extra derangement), and much frantic slugging ensues.
It’s an exhilarating way to begin, and a signpost of what’s to come. What comes is a non-stop thrill-ride of death-metal madness and mayhem, delivering songs packed with rapidly shifting rhythmic patterns and tempos, rapidly veering riffage, deranged string tortures that squeal and scream, bass lines that sound like something chewing through concrete (but also get kind of proggy at times), a multitude of ghastly vocal expulsions, and the kind of destructive grooves that make you imagine being crippled and having to pick up your teeth from the floor.
But don’t forget the name of the album and its lyrical themes. Within these songs are also clarion-clear guitar-leads and solos that are eerily alien. Apart from often sounding supernatural and mysterious, they also channel very human emotions of sorrow, misery, soul-splintering grief — and exultant delirium.
That happens everywhere, but perhaps most notably at the outset of “Eviscerate the Advanced“, which is this writer’s second favorite track of them all, and which also happens to be the most caveman-pounding-rocks track, though it also spins up into a wild, electrifying whirl.
Stylistically, there’s a lot of old-school heavy metal and black metal in the album’s mix, along with fleet-fingered and fleet-limbed technical pyrotechnics, to go along with core ingredients of horror-prone death metal of old, and more jet-propelled bombing runs than bouts of lurching caveman thuggery.
Now’s a good place to incorporate the following quotation from drummer Hudson Barth:
“With Horrors Beyond we feel like we really hit our stride on the songwriting front. We focused on making these songs as brutal, hooky, and concise as possible, and we believe our relentless self-editing efforts paid off in a big way. It helps that we are all better musicians now than we’ve ever been in the past, which allowed us to be more ambitious throughout the writing process.
“We tried to represent everything we love about all kinds of heavy metal on this record while remaining unmistakable as a death metal band, and we feel like we achieved that goal. We’re so excited to finally reveal Horrors Beyond to the world and are especially looking forward to hearing opinions on the final track ‘Ontological Shock,’ a song that spent four years in the making and is our most unique track to date by far.”
Which brings us to that final song. “Ontological Shock” is the longest of them all at more than 9 minutes, and it is indeed a mutating and magical kind of beast, launched by an overture that quickly creates an atmosphere of sci-fi and horror, and then becoming a stylistic roller-coaster ride, with an epic yet tragic experience in its penultimate phase and a dreamlike finale, but with opportunities for the listener to get jackhammered into the ground and blasted to smithereens too. (It’s this writer’s favorite album track.)
And so, to sum up: Despite what you might assume from TROG‘s name, their album Horrors Beyond is ingenious, elaborate, melodically rich, and technically accomplished, in addition to being viscerally propulsive, occasionally brutish, vocally ghastly, and yes, downright horrifying. Not content to bow obediently to old school death metal traditions, they’ve spliced in lots of other ingredients that make the music even more thrilling, and have done so with the kind of cohesive songcraft that should cause you to come back to the songs repeatedly.
In addition to the abundant talents of the TROG crew named above, Horrors Beyond also features guest vocals on “The Void” by William Smith (Afterbirth, Reeking Aura) and a guitar solo on “Interstellar Offal Dealer” by Kurtis Layne (Castrator-live).
Horrors Beyond was entirely engineered and mixed by drummer Hudson Barth, mastered by the famed Colin Marston at Menegroth, The Thousand Caves in Queens, NYC (Gorguts, Artificial Brain, Imperial Triumphant), and features that horrid artwork from emerging Canadian visual artist Emile Roy and photography by Colin Tunney.
Horrors Beyond will be independently released on CD and digital on June 28th, and on cassette through Frozen Screams Imprint. It’s recommended for fans of: Phobophilic, Death, Tomb Mold, Reeking Aura, Artificial Brain, Tribal Gaze, and Mortuous.
PRE-ORDER:
https://trogdeathmetal.bandcamp.com/album/horrors-beyond
https://frozenscreams.bandcamp.com/album/horrors-beyond
MORE TROG LINKS:
https://linktr.ee/trogdeathmetal
https://www.instagram.com/trogdeathmetal
https://trogdeathmetal.bandcamp.com
FROZEN SCREAM:
https://linktr.ee/deathnurserx
https://frozenscreams.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/frozen_screams_imprint