Seattle-based Slutvomit released their debut album Swarming Darkness six years ago through Invictus Productions, and left incinerated wreckage in their wake. Summed up by one prized reviewer (autothrall) as “dirty vest-slinging speed-death thrashing black madness”, it demonstrated a ton of high-octane energy, authentically barbarous and blasphemous spirit, and fiendishly impressive instrumental skill. In the years since then there have been some line-up changes, and as their new album proves, a lot of honing of their blades to an even sharper edge.
It’s commonplace for labels, publicists, and bands themselves to say that a group’s newest release is a step ahead of their last one, but here it’s verifiably true. Slutvomit‘s second album, Copulation of Cloven Hooves, again due for release by Invictus Productions (on October 4th), takes every good quality from their debut album and elevates it, while retaining the music’s capacity to set your hair on fire and race you ’til you’re out of breath.
Slutvomit have created orgiastic bonfires of sound, a mix of devil thrash, death, and black metal that still honors the ’80s and ’90s antecedents of such bands as Slayer, Morbid Angel, Sadus, and Possessed, without sounding like someone else’s re-tread.
They open the new album with the combined track “Command for Triumph/Genocide Lust“, which immediately demonstrates the key ingredients of their sound on this new album. A morbid, groaning riff and grandiose but eerie chiming tones begin to set the stage, joined by a punchy drum pattern — which suddenly becomes maniacally battering as the guitars erupt in displays of shrieking madness. Following a bridge, the drums begin to hammer, as enraged vocals scorch the ears and the riffing becomes a writhing maelstrom of vicious sound, like serpents driven to frenzy. The entire song becomes a grandiose display of utter barbarism, driven to further heights of orgiastic violence by solos that are as hot as acetylene torches and as crazed as a pack of famished, rabid wolves.
Music like this is capable of burning your brain to cinders with rampant hellfire, and there’s plenty more ahead — displays of accelerated mayhem packed with braying chords and blaring arpeggios, sinister and sulphurous leads, punishing piston-driven drum propulsion and clattering, booming fills, and arrays of wild demonic vocal extravagance in which ghastly howls, flesh-stripping screams, bestial roars, and extravagant cries all have their place.
But despite how driven to heights of lust and lunacy all the performers are, the soloing stands out most of all. For the most part it’s absolutely crazed, feverishly fret-melting, and supernatural in its resonance. The sound leaps forward into the mix so piercingly and with such freakish speed that every time it happens you can feel your own pulse race at even higher speeds.
While racing and rampaging speed is Slutvomit’s main gear, they do astutely pick their moments to down-shift. The opening of the title track, for example, is mid-paced and evil, vile and venomous, before it ramps up (the song also includes a misery-soaked melody that is itself a departure from the main through-line of the music), and the closing track, “Acolyte of Death’s Destruction“, also begins as a mid-paced piece of witchery with an exotic swaying-cobra lead before it leaps ahead like a galloping hell-horse trailing flames, accented by an eerie wailing solo.
This really is a hell of a good album made by true licentious acolytes of Hell, devoted to chaos and carnage, fire and ferocity, lewdness and lust. And you can order it right now:
PRE-ORDER:
https://invictusproductions666.bandcamp.com/album/copulation-of-cloven-hooves
SLUTVOMIT:
https://www.facebook.com/Slutvomit-123318014412787
INVICTUS PRODUCTIONS:
https://www.invictusproductions.net
https://www.facebook.com/InvictusProductions