(What follows is our Vietnam-based contributor Vizzah Harri‘s distinctive review of a distinctive new demo by the Vietnamese death/doom band Putrid Vomit Christ, which will be out in December on the House of Ygra and Godz Ov War labels.)
“The power of death signifies that this real world can only have a neutral image of life, that life’s intimacy does not reveal its dazzling consumption until the moment it gives out.”
― Georges Bataille
Doom and its iterations mongrelized with the wails of the departed are not my usual fare, but I gave a demo a spin that might be of interest to death-doom adherents.
If you stare in the mirror long enough and repeat phrasal ministrations of deification, you might be able to channel some putridity; that’s if you practice your guitar and get some friends who know their shit to join your band.
I.C.
The House of Ygra label in Hanoi has been growing steadily in the past few years and one of their longtime collaborators, L.N., started a new project with one of its founders, I.C., to form the delectably named Putrid Vomit Christ. Naming your label Ygra is kinda prophetic, seeing as in some languages it holds the meaning of “Master of their own destiny.”
L.N.
Godz Ov War Productions thought the brand-new debut EP/demo by Putrid Vomit Christ to be good enough to add to their release roster. I can captain the Thesean ship of apparent deduction that these conjurers of death perhaps played the biggest pun on the French ‘petit mort’, designating the totality of their labors as Perpetual Intercourse. A layered pun on death and carnal release then. The songs on this demo are a formidable collection of vile sewage filth with a touch of sophistication.
Having an acronym of PVC might end up in juvenile jokes being made at your expense, however, piping up in their favor is that thusly choosing a name of this nature can be connected to death metal origins.
Polyvinylchloride, if taken apart like some reviewers do with songs in an etymological detection exercise, comes up with poly – having many parts, vinyl meaning wine, and chlorine is derived from ‘khlôros’ which means yellowish-green. One surefire way to induce projectile chunder of teeth-dissolving stomach acid is by imbibing copious amounts of fermented grapes, and yellowish-green does have an air of putrescence, of depravity and of death.
I thought their name was inspired by “Vomit on the putrid remnants ov Christ” by Hellfire Deathcult, but L.N. told me that it was in fact the much earlier influence of Dead Congregation’s “Vomitchrist.” PVC opted for straight-up doom-death in sound instead of the blackened leanings their name suggests, though there are flurries present with code-switching between genre dialects.
PVC averted sounding plastic and their demo is not necessarily going to challenge the proggier technical variants of this year’s more experimental output, yet it is multifaceted. The programmed drums do not come across as too synthetic at all and a polymer indeed of death and doom, for a dive into this garden of earthly delights contains more than just one variant or means of subsistence. Ygra’s other meaning is that of ‘Eater of All’, from Magic the Gathering. If you’re not gonna have a Freeway Migliore around to track drums for you, then programming will have to do, and L.N. and I.C. did just fine, with the former providing the backbone and the latter adding accents and details.
It’s hard not to be absorbed by the inaugural movement of “Vacuous Ecstacy.” Setting the tone masterfully with a sinister drone inflected with reverb and a delay-effected primer. That main riff comes back with the most patient double-bass and an expansion of the movement into a shift of inciting head-bobbing vigor.
Death-doom can go either the route of innovation or, if you’re worshiping gods from a bygone age, you best sexify the zombified deity out of it. With their initiation of this journey, Putrid Vomit Christ were aware enough of how flat a hearkening back could fall, yet astute enough to pull off such a suggestive introduction to their sound with a riff that positively firehose-bleeds brimful the vacancy of their apriority.
With drums sounding nearer to an authored punishment in pneumatic life-sucking gravity, the guitar tone on this beast is dope to the throne of flesh-shredding cephalic hyperbolics. If they played that riff for a whole 30 minutes I don’t think anyone would have complained. The gear shift is smoother than a wayward bald-pated interstellar subject that inadvertently dove into a fountain-spouting black hole or one of the universe’s ecstatic matter-devouring vulvas.
The eponymous second track is more of a steamroller, a bruiser, and if death-doom could be called unrelenting then here it is accomplished. Described internally as:
“an oozing pus-festered death/doom lore inspired by the first wave of Finnish death metal, in the names of Rippikoulu, Abhorrence, Convulse, and the new waves of the genre with Ossuary, Spectral Voice, Krypts and Coffins. 5 track[s] of total ominous sewer filth death metal that signal the impending doom and savored in Bataille’s decadence.”
There is no point in hiding lyrics in auto-deification in the penultimate track if you’re not gonna go do a complete homage to the dark arts. Horizoning blindly. You might think putting your longest song in the middle or the back would be best, though the choice of “Dissecting An Incestuous Dream” is perfect for melding both the death and the doom elements expertly.
“Vacuous Ecstasy” might be their strongest song; “Dissecting…” is what represents their sound. It’s a good thing they didn’t make the typo of eustasy, for no eustasis (mental and physical well-being) could have arrived from the sudden eustatic (universal rise of sea level) shift of a guitar sound, blistering enough to melt ice-caps.
“Dissecting An Incestuous Dream” was the first single released from Perpetual Intercourse. A jumpstart with a maxim gun as percussion (no, the rpm don’t add up, just accept it as artistic license), an establishment of tone appropriately filthy and flowing with rot. The drums at the 41- and 54-second marks with the cymbals and backbeat melding shows serious sophistication in programming. With a mix of giallo and Bataille in lyrical format and aesthetic choices with verses modulated in macabre ruminations of deviant procreation which are delivered in a way that elevates the whole to something that ends up being closer to doom punk:
“Unconscious transcendence of a lust unnatural
Penetrating ether, allured by the fall immoral
Aching, longing for the one that bleeds
Viscous blood and putrid bile
swallow the yolk of Mother’s piles”
Interested in knowing about the ordering of the tracks, the band told us that they “wanted something unexpected, a mixture of both heavy and kinda slow haunting songs. Also, spiritually, [they] imagined it like a free-falling into a hole of obscurity, it gets darker as it goes and the ‘uplifting’ ending is kinda like a splatter-violent end.”
Furthermore, on their decision of which song to choose as the single, they replied that they “chose [Dissecting…] because it’s the most unexpected song of the demo in a way, it’s much more atmospheric and black metal. But it encapsulates what we are and makes us stand out, at least in our view, from the usual death/doom formula.”
There are times where the lyrics veer just so slightly to the left of what hevydevy famously and hilariously deemed as verbose, yet with lines like “Postulate an idol of dust,” “Obstination of love and reason” and “Death is an apophasis” it’s cool to encounter a group that attempts to raise the bar into poetic spheres.
Many creators suffer from the IKEA effect, which refers to a phenomenon in which a person places a disproportionately high value on something they helped create. Putrid Vomit Christ wear their influences on their sleeves. I mean, mentioning some of the best death and death-doom bands out there to have signed riffs into the aether, one must have something to back up the claims, right?
Well, they don’t expressly sound like any of those bands, except perhaps as a tribute to Abhorrence’s self-titled EP from all the way back to 1990. Although it is safe to say that Perpetual Intercourse has its own sound; repetition and pattern augmentation is a part of creating music with a lasting effect, whether that be in your arpeggios or baroque style licks in solos.
When talking about Convulse as an influence one would presume that it was the ’90s they were referring to, them Finns being from Nokia, which possibly had a suffusing replacement effect in the airwaves for the cellular phone company having taken a classical masterpiece and then rendering the imitation to be more pervasive than the original.
FFO’s can be misleading, presumptuous, or a primer on imitation. Sometimes imitation goes a step too far, like when Styx stole, promptly splatter-shat on, and sold off as imitation the wondrous art of Rene Magritte’s 1965 work “The Blank Signature”. A painting which presents as an illusion by simply changing two columns in the whole piece. Putrid Vomit Christ went ahead and created what seems to be a fairly straightforward demo revolving around depravity and senescence, with a blank signature by and of themselves in their allusions. However, by forging their own path in shifting pace and atmosphere in meticulously measured strokes, Perpetual Intercourse paints a sonic tapestry most alluring.
“Poetry leads to the same place as all forms of eroticism — to the blending and fusion of separate objects. It leads us to eternity, it leads us to death, and through death to continuity. Poetry is eternity; the sun matched with the sea.”
― Georges Bataille
Perpetual Intercourse will be released on the 6th of December 2024 by House of Ygra on CD in Vietnam and internationally by Godz ov War Productions on cassette. Digital purchases will be available on Spotify and Bandcamp:
Putrid Vomit Christ is:
I.C. – Vocals/Bass/Programming
L.N. – Guitars/Programming
Z.P. – guitar (live)
B.V. – drums (live)
Credits:
Music by L.N. and I.C.
Lyrics by I.C.
Mixed and mastered by Januaryo Hardy of Insidious Soundlab
Artwork by Martyrdoom Illustrations
Additional artwork and booklet design by André Masson
Photography by Indigo Tongue & IvydeLemuria
Logo by IvydeLemuria
Links:
- HOUSE OF YGRA:
- GODZ OV WAR
- PUTRID VOMIT CHRIST