AN NCS PREMIERE: VULTUR — “POSTMORTEM LIVIDITY”

Oct 152019

I feel like there ought to be a death metal air raid siren that could be turned on when albums like Vultur’s Drowned in Gangrenous Blood are on the way, not so much as a warning (though some people probably should be warned so they can run for the hills) as it would be a rallying cry for addicts of thoroughly gruesome and brutally bludgeoning old school monstrosity. I can imagine the throngs coming on like the zombie hordes in World War Z.

This new album, which follows Vultur’s 2016 demo (Beak) and their 2018 debut album (Entangled in the Webs of Fear) really does display the kind of spirit and craftsmanship that is likely to cause slobbering hunger among fans of evil, diseased, and neck-wrecking death metal. These Hellenic hellraisers have learned their black art very well, as you’ll discover when you hear the track we’re premiering today in the run-up to the album’s October 31st release by Memento Mori.

“Postmortem Lividity” moves through different phases of ghastliness, and that dynamism is part of its appeal. It also turns out to be insidiously memorable, in addition to being a kick in the head and a gouging of the guts while it’s in motion.

The music builds from spooky, echoing guitar tones, joined by the contrasting sounds of a concrete-heavy bass and a cranium-cracking drum beat. The band do a really nice job of carrying that creepy opening melody forward while also changing it, with eerie buzzing fretwork that transforms it into something cruel and vicious. They continue to deepen that feeling of crazed malice with bursts of blasting drum mania and deep hungering growls.

The song also includes sequences of jackhammering chugs, fret-leaping guitar lunacy, horrid howls, scorching shrieks, and variable drum munitions. The track surges into an orgy of violence before collapsing into a morbid, methodically stomping display of ghoulishness, and then builds once more from a seething, pestilential boil to one last flaring of frenzy and skull-busting groove.

Drowned in Gangrenous Blood was recorded with Haris Vougiantzis (of Embrace Of Thorns fame), who also handled the mixing and mastering. The ghastly cover art was rendered by Gargoylekelly. The album ought to appeal to fans of the bands who were the strongest influences on the music — the likes of Morbid Angel, Gorguts, Monstrosity, Immolation, Brutality, Suffocation, Morpheus Descends, and Incantation.