AN NCS PREMIERE: DISPOSSESSED — “CONCRETE TOMB”

(written by Islander)

Portland, Oregon-based Dispossessed made their hulking and haunting presence known with a harrowing first full-length, Exanimate, in 2019, and followed that with the “Makhnovshchina” single in 2022. Now they return with a new five-song full-length named Dêmocide that will be released on October 3rd (a Bandcamp Friday) through Carbonized Records.

As before, Dispossessed use their fusion of sludge, doom, and death metal to express rage and despair, this time lyrically addressing issues such as systemic violence, environmental destruction, and carceral injustice, once more grounding their work in anti-authoritarian ideals.

Those passions thrive in the confrontational nature of their music — which is enormously heavy, wholly absorbing, but also viscerally devastating in both its aural and emotional qualities. We have a striking example of this in the song we’re premiering today — “Concrete Tomb.”

photos by Brittany Hardcastle

As displayed on “Concrete Tomb,” and the album as a whole, Dispossessed have dialed in all the tonal ingredients necessary to crack skulls, loosen bowels, and to render mood mangling experiences of morbid gloom, wrenching agony, putrefying degradation, and crypt-dwelling horror.

What are those ingredients? They include guitars slathered with corrosive reverberating distortion; drums that go off like mortar fire and punch like battering rams; a bass so heavy it resembles a disturbance in the earth’s crust; and an array of cavernous gurgling gutturals, bear-like roars, and leonine howls.

Yes, these ingredients are vital to the band’s devastating mission, but it’s the way they’re used, the progressions among them over the course of the song, that makes the music so simultaneously soul-sinking, blood-congealing, and enthralling.

Proceeding at a lumbering and earth-shaking pace, Dispossessed begin with a riff that’s simultaneously dismal and daunting, and then create adaptations that are even more agonized but also more feverish and fierce, pierced by shrill tones of demented eeriness. Likewise, the drums thunder and rattle as well as crack like gunshots, and the vocals violently blare and bray as often as they bellow from abyssal depths.

The music miserably moans and painfully wails; it sometimes seems to yearn; it swarms like a disease vector; it will move bodies too — and when the lead guitar stands solo near the end to carry the stricken melody forward, it sinks that memorable melody even deeper into a listener’s head.

DISPOSSESSED:
K. Jewett – guitar, bass
M. White – guitar
M. Du Bose – vocals
L. MacDonald – drums

Dispossessed draw influence from bands like Corrupted, Asunder, Winter, and Grief. They recorded their new album with Mike Vera at VeraTone (Juliana Hatfield, Great Falls), and it was mastered by James Plotkin at Plotkinworks (Earth, Sunn O))), Khanate, Amarok), and completed with horrifying cover art by Abomination Hammer.

The track “If I Must Die” features synthesizers by B. Pierpont and an original poem by Dr. Refaat Alareer.

Dêmocide will be released by Carbonized on LP, CD, MC, and digital formats. Find pre-orders via the links below, followed by a stream of the album’s first-revealed song, the opening track “Exanimate“.

In other Dispossessed news, they will support the album with a West Coast tour, leading with a hometown record release show on September 27th and following that with other dates from October 3rd through 11th. See all confirmed dates below, and expect updates to post over the weeks ahead.

DISPOSSESSED Tour Dates:
9/27/2025 High Water Mark – Portland, OR *Record Release Show
10/03/2025 TBA – Victoria, BC
10/04/2025 Red Gate– Vancouver, BC
10/05/2025 Slice of Life Pizza – Tacoma, WA
10/06/2025 Jules Maes – Seattle, WA
10/07/2025 The Crypt – Olympia, WA
10/08/2025 Naked Lounge – Chico, CA
10/09/2025 Cafe Colonial – Sacramento, CA
10/10/2025 Siren’s Song – Eureka, CA
10/11/2025 Hesher’s Pizza – Oakland, CA

PRE-ORDER:
https://carbonizedrecords.merchtable.com/search?q=Dispossessed
https://carbonizedrecords.bandcamp.com/album/d-mocide

DISPOSSESSED:
https://www.instagram.com/dispossessed_pdx/