On January 31st the Kansas City outfit Dejecter will build upon and expand what they’ve done on two previous EPs through the release of a new one named Oblation Husk, and today we’re helping to introduce it through our premiere of one of the four new songs. Its entirely fitting name is “Fiends.”
For those who haven’t yet discovered the band, it began in the summer of 2022 when Sean Rehmer (Mercurial) and Josh Caldwell (Godhammered, One Inch Punch) begun writing together at Storm Crow Studio just outside of Kansas City. Some months later, they sought out a vocalist to complete their vision and found what they sought in Silas Olson (Devourist).
They then put out those two EPs mentioned above, Human(v)oid in 2023 and Majesty Artificial last year. Those two led Metal Archives to brand Dejecter‘s music as “Death/Sludge Metal,” and you’ll detect both of those genre ingredients in the new EP, but other ingredients are now also apparent.
In the case of the song we’re presenting today, the music is viscerally compelling and authentically fiendish — brutishly heavy and bone-smashing, malignant and miserable, but also disturbingly surreal. With respect to its subject matter, Dejecter offer this (which perhaps suggests they’re fans of The Last of Us?):
“‘Fiends‘ attempts to open a world to the mentally depraved bearing twisted appetites for flesh in a pure form of carnage and chaos at the hands of a fungal, pathogenic virus.”
Dejecter don’t really ease people into the song. Even though the opening feedback decibels are the quietest among those yet to come, they’re still unsettling, and so is the palpable monstrosity of the ensuing roars. That’s the prelude for the big rumbling and lurching tank attack to come.
Yet even when the band are bringing the brutish, sludgy heaviness, they still infiltrate the music with weirdly darting, miserably quivering, and persistently unsettling guitar emanations, along with rabid vocal and percussive outbursts. (There might be more than one reason for those ‘shrooms in the EP’s cover art.)
At times, even as the drums are vividly tumbling, the guitars generate miasma-like sensations or skitter about like insects in feeding frenzies or coldly chug in tandem with the big earth-mover of a bass. The rhythms also stop and start, drop bombs, and pop heads like nearby gunshots.
This opening track also features guest appearances from former bandmates of Rehmer and Caldwell, Will Gleason (former Mercurial) and Ray Garcia (Godhammered).
Oblation Husk was mixed and mastered by Zack Alvey, and features eye-catching cover art by Diogo Soares, which (as you’ve seen) is used to very good effect in the video for “Fiends.” The EP will become available on all digital platforms on January 31st. For more info, check the links below.
https://linktr.ee/dejecter_kc
https://dejecter.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/dejecterkc
https://www.instagram.com/dejecter_kc