(written by Islander)
Following up on a two-song promo released last fall, the Swedish death metal trio Filth will have their debut album Time to Rot released on July 18th by Me Saco Un Ono and Rotted Life.
From the name of the band to the name of the album and the more ghastly aspects of the cover art, the signals are sent that this will be death metal with a decidedly foul and fetid aroma. Perhaps less immediately obvious, the new album is also stunningly ferocious and bludgeoning.
And you should take something else away from the unusual colorfulness and more surreal aspects of the cover art: There is more going on in Filth‘s music than grotesque putrescence and rampaging evisceration — as you’ll discover very quickly upon listening to “Emaciated,” the album track we’re premiering today.
The opening 30 seconds of the song demonstrate a fiendish cleverness you might not be expecting from a band named Filth.
They begin with the bright reverberations of a guitar that devilishly dances, then allow the heavy ominous clang of the bass to briefly carry things forward, and then blast everything to smithereens in a sudden explosion of maniacal drumming and dense, hornet-swarm riffing. As that viciously churning and swarming riffage rises and falls, you’ll hear the musical connection to the opening’s first two phases.
The furious rumbling of the bass anchors the song in subterranean heaviness, but the guttural and gagging vocals are even deeper, and more monstrously malignant.
But those are just the opening twists and turns of Filth‘s grisly gauntlet. There are more to come. They slow the pace and cause the music to lurch and whine, to become brazen and to ooze a stinking rot. They inflict punishing jackhammer-jolts and unfurl an exotic guitar solo that swirls and screams, like demon ecstasies. They chill the skin with eerie vaporous wailing tones that waft above a sinister but misery-soaked riff.
Through it all, the rhythm section keep things very heavy and highly head-moving with their own variations, and the recurring melodic motifs stitch everything together in catchy ways.
And so: Although the music is unmistakably foul and ferocious, turbulent and miserable, grisly and violent, it’s also sepulchral — and a meticulously crafted piece of work from beginning to end. It’s also carefully produced in a way that allows all the moving pieces to stand out, without diminishing the low-end power or sanitizing the overarching filthiness of the experience.
To repeat: The release date is July 18th. Me Saco Un Ono will handle the vinyl LP version while Rotted Life will handle the CD and cassette versions. Find pre-orders via the links below, and then also be sure to listen to the album’s previously released title track
PRE-ORDER:
https://www.mesacounojo.com
https://mesacounojo.bandcamp.com/album/time-to-rot
https://www.rottedlife.com
https://rottedlife.bandcamp.com
One Response to “AN NCS PREMIERE: FILTH — “EMACIATED””
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Very cool album cover–more going on in there than meets the eye at first. Oh, and the music is really good too. I’ve been listening to death metal all day, and so potentially desensitized, but no, those two songs above demanded I crank up the volume further and make the death metal grimace face. Nasty. A bit like Mortiferum (a favorite). I am looking forward to this release.