(written by Islander)
About five weeks ago we premiered a song from Spiral Crypts, the forthcoming debut album of Disembodiment from Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada. We preceded it with a warning:
You are about to be stomped and gouged, bounced off the walls and lacerated, dragged into foul and choking cesspools and made witness to violent charnel-house abominations. Your pulse will pound, your head will move, your guts will churn. And you will smile broadly at every abuse to which you will be subjected!
Five weeks might have been long enough for physical and mental therapy to have had some beneficial recuperative effect on listeners who heard that song, “Stygian Overture“. It’s possible listeners have stopped smiling now too (smiling takes extra effort when your jaw’s wired shut). And so the time is right to bring you another helping of death metal trauma straight from the Spiral Crypts, through a song whose title describes some of its own consequences: “Infected To Rot“.
For those of you who still might not be familiar with Disembodiment, they first came together under the name Oath div. 666, but they then reinvented their musical and lyrical approach and took their current name to recognize the change. They revealed their new direction in a 2021 EP named Mutated Chaos (released by Everlasting Spew, which is also releasing the new album, and enthusiastically reviewed here at NCS).
Obviously, the traumas inflicted by Disembodiment‘s brand of death metal are more imagined than real. Probably. In the case of today’s new song, those visions are inspired by grisly riffing, foul in tone, that alternately hulks and heaves and then erupts in eviscerating and writhing frenzies, coupled with guttural vocal monstrosity and drums that chop like axes and ruthlessly batter.
But let’s not forget the name of the song, which points to other visions it spawns. As Disembodiment slow the pace, the music dismally moans, bringing rot to the fore, and it catastrophically pounds.
And there’s more: The bass gets a chance to miserably clang. The music jackhammers and stomps, swarms and churns. The vocals explode in ghastly strangled tones and grotesque howls. A cymbal vividly ticks like a countdown to an execution.
In other words, in just 3 1/2 minutes, the song morphs quite a lot, creating an array of bludgeoning and blood-congealing experiences, delivering a bland of slam-wise thuggishness and febrile frenzies, all of it thoroughly ghoulish and persistently electrifying.
In even fewer words, this is killer stuff, and further evidence of a killer album.
DISEMBODIMENT is:
Carl – Bass/back vocals
Christian – Guitars/back vocals
Eric – Drums
Mathieu – Vocals
The album was mixed by Christian and mastered by Carlo Altobelli at Toxic Basement. The grotesque cover art is the work of Slimeweaver. All other artworks by draught__.
Everlasting Spew will release Spiral Crypts on July 11th on CD, MC, and Digital formats, and they plan to release a vinyl edition in late 2025. They recommend the album for fans of Incantation, Corpus Offal, Undergang, and Rottrevore. Find more info via the links below, and then also lend your bloody ears to the album’s title song, which has also previously premiered, as well as “Stygian Overture” if you missed it here.
PRE-ORDER:
[BUY PHYSICAL] https://bit.ly/4dd8jTj
[BUY DIGITAL] https://bit.ly/4jOCT8e
DISEMBODIMENT:
https://www.facebook.com/disembodimentdeath