(In January Horror Pain Gore Death Productions released a new album from the Lithuanian death metal savages Stranguliatorius, and below we present our Norway-based contributor Chile’s review of this new full-length atrocity.)
It is not surprising that metal, one of the shining lights of postmodern art, that paragon of human creativity, has made a foothold in many different places around the world, and is luckily not limited anymore geographically or in any other way.
Hailing from Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, Stranguliatorius is another one of those worthy entries in our everlasting, world-encompassing quest for all things filthy and deadly. No strangers on these pages, we have been visited by these death dealers before.
One of their previous albums got plenty of love here back in 2018, and deservedly so, with our editor calling the band “damned clever songwriters,” managing to concoct “a toxic brew of old school death metal, grindcore, doom, and d-beat crust”. Sounds good to me.
Now, I’ve been to Vilnius some years back and it really is a nice place, but there’s obviously something in the water, as they say, judging by the savage intensity on display.
While some death metal bands have that distinctive stench arising from the decaying, rotten flesh with the imagery and riffs that go with it, some acquire a different perspective and put themselves in the role of the cold-blooded, flesh-cutting pathologist himself.
Sister, pass the scalpel, please.
Four and a half years have passed since their previous record, that being Doctor’s Orders: Do Not Touch!, so time has surely come for Stranguliatorius to make a return with their fourth full-length album, namely Flies Don’t Lie. The new album sees them expanding their line-up to a five-piece by adding more guitars and taking a somewhat more serious take on their normally sarcastic approach to these deathly visions.
The simple, yet very effective, black and white cover photo of the coroner’s office masterfully depicts the cold, suffocating nature of the music, subduing us inside one of those refrigerator compartments. The typewriter font of the coroner’s report complements this for the total immersion in the devious machinations of the head pathologist.
As expected, the band continue the attack from different directions and never rest in one place. There are flashes of grindcore blinding us with sheer speed and vehemence, there are surges of punishing death metal, and then there are inundations of the feedback-drenched death/doom drawl, all of this packed in a more than manageable half an hour.
Be it the miniature of the title track’s nine seconds or the intoxicating rush of “C9H13N” (chemical formula for amphetamine, for all you science addicts), flies really do not lie, cadavers taste better after some good old pounding.
“Cremator Operator” surely goes in the book of catchiest song titles, but the vivid scene of candy melting in the mouth, side by side to melting of the body in the incinerator, absolutely takes the cake and goes into the annals of metal poetry.
With that said, the lyrics are in Lithuanian, but the band provides translations on their Bandcamp page so you can marvel there at the imaginations from the dead side, although one can argue that since they are being screamed at us at high volume anyhow, language is the least of our worries.
Elsewhere, songs like the ultimate workout anthem “When I Lift the Coffin Lid” or the completely deranged “Acetone Dream” possess all the core qualities one would ever want from music like this, while the ominous “They Who Don’t Sleep Will Not Wake Up” show the band excelling also at cavernous death metal with ease and splendour.
In the end, death comes for us all and what better way than to go laughing into its leering face. As I always said, if I can choose, I’d like to go just like my grandfather. Peacefully in my sleep. And not kicking and screaming like the passengers in his bus. Anyway, Stranguliatorius are here to help with that transition, and personally, I am all in for that ride.
Flies Don’t Lie is out now on Horror Pain Gore Death Productions in all available formats. Orders for the record and all related merchandise are possible via label and Bandcamp stores.
https://stranguliatorius.bandcamp.com/album/flies-dont-lie
https://hpgd.bandcamp.com/album/flies-dont-lie
https://www.facebook.com/stranguliatoriusband