Since 2016 the one-person New Jersey band Dead and Dripping has lurked in a far subterranean corner of the sonic torture chamber known as “brutal death metal”. Over the course of a pair of demos and a pair of albums, its music has proven to be far more bamboozling than the typical pile-driving thuggery and bullet-spitting mayhem for which the genre is best known. The music has been unusually intricate and technically impressive, though it would be wrong to try to slot it into the “technical death metal” framework, and it has trended in increasingly macabre directions.
All of those qualities stand out in Dead and Dripping‘s new album Blackened Cerebral Rifts, and indeed this new one is even more surreal and schizophrenic than what has come before, even more technically complex, and yet somehow also ruthlessly bludgeoning and gruesome. For those reasons (and others), the vividly colorful and strikingly bizarre cover art by Jason Wayne Barnett is an excellent companion for the music. Not for naught does Transcending Obscurity Records recommend it for fans of Wormed, Demilich, and Defeated Sanity, as well as Suffocation, Mortal Decay, and Wicked Innocence.
Three songs from the album have already premiered, and if you’ve heard those you have a very good idea of what you’ll be getting yourselves into when Transcending Obscurity releases the album on August 11th. But especially if you haven’t heard any of those, and even if you have, the song we’re premiering today is well worth your time. Continue reading »
