(In this review DGR revisits an old favorite, the German band Distaste and their new album, released a few weeks ago by FDA Records.)
We’ve had a long history with Austria’s Distaste, as we’ve watched them evolve their form of blast-happy grindcore, relentlessly focused on short songs and straightforward hammering, to a blackened death-inspired group with a light sludge flavoring, to the current incarnation of the band obsessed with fury, hellfire, and portmanteaus of their chosen language.
Previously, Distaste had done pretty well for themselves with albums like Of Abyss-Hearts And Falsity and Black Age Of Nihil but they really started to come into their own along about the time of the Rotten Cold/Distaste split and the Todt EP. Adopting a strong guitar-lead segment did the group well, adding another element to the otherwise whirlwind chaos and well-spoken language of grindcore circle-pit throwdowns, and Deibel was a strong culmination of that.
Granted, Deibel also scored pretty well here for reasons unrelated to the album itself but it speaks to the wider effect of music on the outside world and how even something as simple as keeping an album at a trim twenty-nine minutes can help somebody far more than you would ever know.
But alas, that was four years ago and in the time since then Distaste have kept busy in a variety of projects while also still finding time to release a covers EP in 2021 entitled Wiedergaenger and, finally, at the beginning of October this year, unleashing their latest album Der Ertraeger und das Fleisch via F.D.A. Records.
Upon listening to the first few songs it is safe to say that Distaste have taken everything they unleashed upon the world with Deibel and doubled down on it in one of the more common ‘follow-up’ album approaches out there: Take the previous disc and make it sound like the end of the world.
At fourteen songs and near twenty-nine and a half minutes, Der Ertraeger und das Fleisch hews pretty close to its immediate predecessor’s fifteen tacks and twenty-nine minutes and seven seconds. Despite being four years apart the two albums are effectively mirrors of each other. The younger sibling is the darker and more brooding of the two – which makes a sort of twisted sense, given that it’s not like things in the world have gotten much better in the four years since Distaste‘s last album, and given that Grind often pulls from the current state of the world for lyrical and musical inspiration, You can see how an already dark and furious album would only come back two-fold under a different name.
The other Distaste hallmarks are also still in play here, including the dual-vocal attack that is delivered about as rapidly as the drumming happening behind it. The lineup may have shifted a bit on the rhythm section front between releases, but otherwise Distaste continue to sound very much like Distaste.
The first three songs of Der Ertraeger und das Fleisch all follow a similar bent, so you can understand where it seems like Distaste are playing in a similar field as last time. Songs like “Zerfallsprozess” and “Narrenkappe” are all fire and fury and neither bothers clearing the one and a half minute mark. The opening song especially clocks in at a neat forty-eight seconds and does the sudden stop/sever the recording line style of ending before the band comes shrieking back in for song two.
If you had to pick a sort of throughline to describe a central Distaste sound – as of the Todt EP at least – then the first salvo of songs here does a good job. It’s when the songs get longer – as in, clearing two minutes (only two of the fourteen here go over three) – that Distaste start to get a little more adventurous and the guitar-lead work is reintroduced into the picture. “Geiferloch” and “Der Ertraeger” have some exceptionally apocalyptic guitar lines that worm their way through each song after the band launch the initial blastbeat volley. Songs on Der Ertraeger und das Fleisch hang out in that sort of vein for most of the album’s run time, meaning you’re guaranteed some mean and fairly solid bludgeonings every time the album switches songs.
Distaste cover a lot of ground and pull out nearly every trick in the handbook in the lead-up to “Das Leid und sein Gift” at song seven. Weighing in at a hefty five minutes and forty seconds, it’s the midpoint of the album and the spot when Distaste turn the disc on its head a little. The earlier parts of the album are all increasing velocity up to the point and musically you come to a head at “Das Leid und sein Gift” – including slowing it down to a beefier guitar chug for most of its run.
And then, much as a you climb up a mountain, so too must you descend it, and in the case of “Fasschrist” right afterward. You do so quickly. Very, very quickly. From that point you’re back in the drying machine full of cinder blocks being run at high speed, with tracks like “Sisyphos” ready to add themselves to the pile as well. With Distaste it then becomes leaping from setting one fire to setting another, but it has become something of a core tenet of the band to keep the chaos high for most of a disc’s run time.
Thus, the blasting never stops, the high-pitched guitar melodies that come screaming in from each corner of the room never stop, and the bass guitar is enough to knock a cement pylon out of the ground each time it is strummed. It doesn’t break a tremendous amount of newer ground for the band but a release that just iterates on its predecessor when you have something as mean as Deibel prior to it is acceptable here. They’re already starting from a good spot, so it’s not hard for the band to launch themselves into the realm of a great second round, mean and moody as it is.
Der Ertraeger und das Fleisch joins the class of 2023’s exceedingly strong grindcore offerings; its arrival closer to the year’s closing has no effect on its impact whatsoever. This genre in particular is one that lends itself to a ton of releases every year as the concept of firing off a ton of short songs in rapid barrage form seems to strike a nerve and spark the creativity within new groups all the time, so even the small handful that we’re able to cover here can feel inconsequential when compared to the Goliath-esque scale of releases out every year. However, we do seem to get very lucky every time. in that the ones we do choose to tackle tend to be ones that are capable of immolating the music devices they emanate from by the time they wrap up.
Der Ertraeger und das Fleisch continues – as mentioned before – many of the trademarks that Distaste established on their previous two or three releases. They sound absolutely furious and the music is delivered with equal aplomb. They move fast with no care for dynamics in full album sequence other than coming across relentless, and each song contained within here is its own little microcosm of a musical explosion.
Distaste continue to hew close to a lot of core favorites on Der Ertraeger und das Fleisch, so you can sleep confident that you’re still going to have a ton of thrashing riffs, heavy on the launch-style momentum circle-pit changes, and enough piston-fired drumming to keep anyone happy. Der Ertraeger und das Fleisch doesn’t completely upend the world musically by the time it wraps up, but it does do a good job blasting a hole to the center of it.
https://fda-records.bandcamp.com/album/der-ertraeger-und-das-fleisch
https://www.facebook.com/distastegrind