AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): ANTHRODYNIA — “UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS EMANATING FROM WITHIN”

(written by Islander)

Anthrodynia is a new two-person band formed last year in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, uniting the talents and experience of Derek Orthner (Begrime Exemious, Azath) and Durell Smith (ex-Mahria, ex-Kuroi Jukai). Their music, as captured on their blood-congealing and blood-rushing debut album Unspeakable Horrors Emanating From Within, manifests a love for both death and doom metal and a shuddering aptitude for marrying the mauling, miserable, and supernatural qualities of those genres.

Undeniably well-named, the album will be released this Friday, August 16th, by Nameless Grave Records, but you’ll have a chance to listen to all of it through our full streaming premiere today.

all photos by Circle Of Bones

“As the behavior of mankind increases in cruelty and pettiness, a permanent state of exhaustion has taken its hold.” Those words “define and inform” the sound of Anthrodynia. The music is also informed by traditions laid down and furthered by the likes of Disembowelment, Incantation, Spectral Voice, and Grief.

Through an amalgam of foundational but contrasting ingredients, the music conjures visions of hulking horrors and haunting apparitions, as well as swarms of flesh-eating disease and gargantuan iron-shod stomps. The music is both ghastly and grief-stricken, degrading and decaying, massively heavy and eerily otherworldly — and altogether a transfixing nightmare.

Those core ingredients are well-defined in the opening song, “Severed From Mundanity“. They include humongous and mind-mangling guitar tones, a mix of ruinously sizzling abrasion and whining clarity, as well as bowel-loosening bass tones, dynamic drum performances that include electrifying fills, and monstrous guttural roars.

In that opening song, which leans into grisly tremolo’d fretwork as well as dragging chords, the riffing saturates the listener in corrosive sounds of disease and misery, punctuated with bursts of feverish gnashing and cold-hearted jolts, like the driving pistons of some hellish machine.

Variable in its pacing, as are all the songs on the album, “Severed From Mundanity” includes an eruption of furiously blasting drums and maniacally roiling riffage, still gritty enough to deflesh, like a swarm of flesh-eating bacteria, as well as piercing guitar soloing that deliriously quivers and a down-shifted phase in which the music slows to a horrible crawl. As the bass dismally throbs, the tremolo’d guitars buzz and mewl in harmonies of agony.

As noted, that song lays out the duo’s main ingredients, but not all of them. They launch “Engulfed In Grief“, “Cathartic Dissemination“, and “Suffering Pure Light” with eerily reverberating guitar instrumentals. They end “Engulfed In Grief” with a keyboard finale of bell-like ringing and fevered pulsations. In the largely instrumental “Cathartic Dissemination” they dispense with those truly abyssal growls and instead bring in seemingly wordless baritone singing that drags the listener deeper into the music’s moods of harrowing hopelessness, and in that same song a haunting solo guitar rings like chimes of death, culminating in an ethereal, astral finale.

In “A Rotten Sun” Anthrodynia mount a rumbling and rotten assault, again erupting in bursts of violent and morbid frenzy but also with punishing lurches. And it includes a penultimate instrumental phase that’s scratchy and warbling, perhaps a mangled keyboard, perhaps a mutilated guitar. That wailing melody carries forward to the end above another episode of massive and mangling horror.

In addition to these and other embellishments, the songs provide a cornucopia of hideous and harrowing riffs and head-smacking rhythmic variations. The music sometimes heaves and lurches like a nightmarish leviathan, and at other times brutishly stomps, oozes disgusting sonic fluids, and uses vibrating guitar solos to manifest grief and pain in piercing tones. In that standout song “Cathartic Dissemination” Anthrodynia deluge the listener in a caustic sonic miasma within which fire-bright fretwork displays increasingly demented convulsions, and in that closer “Suffering Pure Light” they make time to chug people right down into the ground.

The coupling of death and doom metal is of course a union of now-ancient origin, but the macabre and malicious spawn aren’t all the same. The musical spawn of Anthrodynia stand out for just how horrifying and haunting they are. See for yourselves:

We also want to share the comments of Derek Orthner:

“At the beginning of 2024, Durell and I formed ANTHRODYNIA, and our creative process sparked immediately. We’ve been in a variety of bands together for almost 20 years, so we had a pretty good track record of working with each other. Previously, we had dipped our toes into doom metal with a more stoner-oriented band called Cygnus, followed by a grindcore band (Dysplasia), a shoegaze band (Daydreaming), and a crust band (Falsehood).

“When Durell told me he was really getting into bands like Spectral Voice, and wanted to work on something in that vein, I was immediately into the idea. I had him over for several cocktails and spun some of the most crucial death/doom records while we discussed every detail we could think of for our new band. Unspeakable Horrors Emanating From Within is essentially the result of that night, and many years’ worth of death/doom metal fandom just streaming out of me.

“The final product is something we’re both really proud of, and the work that we put into it was nothing short of satisfying. Death metal has been my favorite genre of music since I was a teenager, and to do stuff in the vein of bands like Disembowelment, Cianide, Incantation, and so on, is exactly where I want to be.”

Unspeakable Horrors Emanating From Within was recorded, mixed, and produced by Derek Orthner, mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege, and completed with artwork and logo by Karmazid and layout by Derek Orthner.

Nameless Grave is releasing the album on CD, LP, and digital formats. Find pre-orders via the links below.

Anthrodynia isn’t just a studio project. They’re also booking live performances in support of the album, including their participation in Infest Underground Arts Festival in Edmonton on August 29th through 31st, where they’ll share the stage with Archgoat, Fugitive, Midnight, Nunslaughter, Unholy Grave, and more. Go here for more info about that fest, and expect additional live announcements from Anthrodynia in the weeks ahead.

PRE-ORDER:
https://namelessgraverecords.com/
https://anthrodynia.bandcamp.com/album/unspeakable-horrors-emanating-from-within

ANTHRODYNIA:
https://anthrodynia.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/anthrodynia.doom
https://www.facebook.com/anthrodyniadoom