(written by Islander)
Death Whore‘s band name is a bit of a fist in the face for people who see it. Their music is a much bigger fist, uninterested in pulling its punches. You’ll get the idea again from the name of their forthcoming debut album, Blood Washes Everything Away, and from the name of the album track we’re premiering with a video today, “Infernal Terror Machine“.
Death Whore‘s earlier releases, their 2020 self-titled EP and the Total Teutonic Torso EP two years later, were mauling and murderous hybrids of death metal, hardcore, and crust punk. Wielding punishing percussive hammers prone to jackhammer grooves and stringed instruments tuned to mangling levels of abrasion, and fronted by scraped-raw and savagely rabid vocals and gang howls, they leaned into furious metallic hardcore beatdowns fueled by adrenaline and coated in grit and filth, leavened by monstrously brutalizing stomps as bleak as a sucking chest wound.
Those EPs are well worth catching up to even now, especially if you’re interested in getting big doses of raging and ruinous catharsis that are as viscerally compulsive as they are bone-smashing and corrosive. They build very high expectations for this debut album that we’re about to preview.
Photo Credit: Charlotte Beaune
The band themselves (based in Nancy, France) preview the album as “punitive, dirty, expeditious, and exhilarating,” providing “a mix of death metal and crust-punk, filtered through the urgency of hardcore-punk and the sonic intensity of sludge” and marking “marking a natural evolution from the band’s earlier hardcore-metal sound.”
As a sign of this, “Infernal Terror Machine” lives up to its name. Almost immediately, the drums begin pummeling at high speed and the brutally distorted riffage viciously slashes, swarms, and blares. In front of this enraged but coldly dedicated demolition machine the vocals maniacally vent their own vitriol in a mix of mad howls and ravenous roars.
When the band aren’t furiously tearing up everything in front of them they’re inflicting traumatic pile-driver blows, head-moving to be sure, but bludgeoning enough to bust up concrete. They also lace the music with bursts of shrill and surreal lead-guitar delirium and darting keyboards that resemble something like a demented calliope, more elegant than anything else you’ll hear in the music, but also eerily chilling.
Even from just this one new song it’s apparent that Death Whore aren’t just re-treading their first two EPs, but are trying out some new things, albeit without moderating their fury or their ruinous destructive power. It’s still a big fist in the face.
DEATH WHORE:
Antoine Duffour – bass, keyboards, samples, backing vocals
Fabien W. Furter – vocals, guitars, samples
Pierre ‘Gorgor’ Schaffner – Drums, backing vocals
Blood Washes Everything Away was recorded at Studio de la Forge in Dombasle-sur-Meurthe and Nancy, with recording and mixing by Pierre ‘Gorgor’ Schaffner. Mastering and LP mastering were done by the veteran James Plotkin.
The album’s cover art is the work of Primitive Man‘s Ethan Lee McCarthy (aka Hell Simulation), with layout and design by Thibaut Marquis. The album will be released on May 16th by a quintet of labels — No Good To Anyone Productions, Duality Records, Specific Recordings, Crypt of Dr. Gore, and Hecatombe Records.
Orders will be available on the release date (see the links below). I suspect the album will appeal to fans of bands like Wolfbrigade, Integrity, Vastum, and Acephalix.
Also below, we’re including a stream of the first advance track from the album, “12 Worm Wounds“.
LISTEN TO “INFERNAL TERROR MACHINE”
https://link.nogoodtoanyone.com/ITM
FIND THE ALBUM:
No Good to Anyone: https://deathwhore.bandcamp.com/album/blood-washes-everything-away
Hecatombe: https://www.instagram.com/hecatombe_records
Crypt of Dr Gore: http://www.cryptofdrgore.fr/
Specific: https://specificrecordings.fr/
Duality: https://www.discogs.com/fr/seller/Leff_3007/profile
DEATH WHORE LINKS:
https://beacons.ai/deathwhore
https://www.facebook.com/DEATHWH0RE
https://www.instagram.com/deathwhoreband