Anyone who’s been paying attention to extreme metal for more than a few months knows that Everlasting Spew Records is one of the most dependable curators of dreadful, demented, disturbing, and devastating music out there. To their burgeoning roster, they have now added the thoroughly demented and impressively ingenious death metal quintet Metaphobic from Atlanta, Georgia.
What now lies ahead of us is the band’s debut album, the perfectly named Deranged Excruciations, which Everlasting Spew has set for release on February 28th. What lies ahead of you even more closely is today’s premiere of a song from the album named “Execration” — also very well named.
By way of background, we’ll share this info from the label:
Metaphobic is a five piece death metal group from Atlanta, GA originated in 2018 from the ashes of their previous band, Cesspool, when the main songwriter departed. The remaining members Peter (Obsolescence), Nathan (Paladin), Shawn (Homicidal, ex-Sadistic Ritual), and Danny took the band in a completely new direction and began writing all new material. In 2019 Dan (Malformity) was recruited on bass and the band named themselves Metaphobic.
And with that as background, now let’s get straight to “Execration“. The dictionary defines that word as meaning “an angry denouncement or curse”, and the music is indeed both furious and cursed — but it’s also a completely wild and head-spinning ride.
Leaving no time for a listener to think, Metaphobic immediately attack with a blizzard of deranged and dissonant riffing, machine-gun drumming, and brutally plundering bass-lines.
But the music quickly becomes even more lunatic and bizarre when gruesome gutturals and rabid howls arrive, along with flashes of crazed, whining fretwork. The song also quickly veers into a darting episode of jubilantly quirky notes and clobbering percussion, and the guitars continue leaping and swirling like sounds from an asylum for swallows that have lost their tiny minds.
The band also trigger bursts of rapid rhythmic jackhammering, create glittering whirlpools of sound, erupt in vicious instrumental feeding-frenzies, and cause the music to brilliantly sparkle in splendor.
To be sure, it all sounds demented, but wondrously so. Everything from the tempo to the drum patterns and melodic motifs (and even the macabre vocals) is in constant motion, spinning and cavorting like a kaleidoscope propelled by a centrifuge.
It’s exhilarating to hear not just how technically talented the performers are but how wildly adventurous their songwriting is. They race along a vibrating tightrope with teeth gnashing and fingers and limbs flying and never fall off.
METAPHOBIC:
Danny Dasher – Vocals
Peter Lai – Guitar
Shawn Staszko – Lead Guitar
Dan Ratanasit – Bass & Backing Vocals
Nathan McKinney – Drums
Deranged Excruciations was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Alex Parra at Second Sight Sound in Atlanta. It features horrifying cover art by the legendary Jon Zig, layout by Justin Stubbs, and logos by Jeremy “JimBob Cooter” Adams and Mike Michalsk.
Everlasting Spew is releasing the album on jewel-case CD and digital formats, and recommends it for fans of Monstrosity, Demilich, Faceless Burial, and early Gorguts. It’s available for pre-order at Bandcamp, where you can hear two more songs from the album — “Spectral Circle” and “Hypnosis Engram“.
PRE-ORDER:
https://everlastingspew.bandcamp.com/album/deranged-excruciations
METAPHOBIC:
https://www.facebook.com/Metaphobic.atl/
https://www.instagram.com/metaphobic.atl
https://metaphobic.bandcamp.com/album/demo-2021