(Gonzo is busily thinking about what to cover in his next monthly review roundup for NCS, but in the meantime he’s pulled together some thoughts about a pair of EPs released in the early days of October by two U.S. bands.)
When you spend a significant amount of time bulldozing your way through new music discoveries, a lot can happen. For one, it eventually becomes a hell of a lot harder to be impressed at anything. Your brain starts to tune out anything formulaic or unimaginative. Quality will always triumph over quantity, you start to tell yourself, and surely you’ll find yourself immersed in the throes of a dopamine hit that can only be generated by the nastiest, vilest, and more extreme foray into sonic depravity the human mind can possibly conjure. Just keep searching.
Then, at long last, when your quest for heavy music fulfillment reaches a zenith, it leads you to the very edge of the abyss you were once so intent on finding… and you suddenly find yourself afraid to look down, fearing what lies below.
In the case of these two EPs, the abyss stares back.
UMULAMAHRI, LEARNING THE SECRETS OF ACID
When played loudly enough, the newest brainchild of Pyrrhon vocalist Doug Moore and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Hawkins will do more than piss off your neighbors. It might conjure some demonic presence that can only be perceived with a heroic dose of LSD; hence the EP’s title being an accurate descriptor.
The five tracks here are immense in their brutality. It’s the kind of dissonant death that gurgles and smolders from a cosmic portal, starting off as an ominous harbinger before it unfurls into a full-blown assault that’s downright terrifying. Occasional ambient interludes mercifully break the unpredictable Willy Wonka-from-Hell ride you’ve strapped yourself into, but even those are strewn with unsettling sounds. “Bursting with Life’s True Fruit” will keep you on edge this way for six-and-a-half minutes, and follow-up “VVVVRMS” continues the trip while giving exactly zero fucks about your wellbeing in the process.
Just as with any actual acid trip, the stuff can turn on you when you least expect it. As a whole, Learning the Secrets of Acid might have dipped a demonic digit into the same creative vat that Deathspell Omega and Portal do, but the difference with the duo of Umulamahri is they push extremity into territory that few others dare to explore.
https://umulamahri.bandcamp.com/album/learning-the-secrets-of-acid-2
https://www.instagram.com/umulamahrideath
SUFFERING HOUR, IMPELLING REBIRTH
Minnesota’s Suffering Hour have graced these pages before, as their uncompromising brand of cosmic blackened death has turned many heads throughout the heavy music underground. Impelling Rebirth might not be a full album in the most definitive sense of the word, but it doesn’t matter—these are five of the most bat-shit insane songs you’re likely to hear all year.
Dizzying fretwork powers frenetic tempos, bile-spewing vocals, and song structures that probably wouldn’t even make sense to even attempt putting on sheet music. This music is dark, tempestuous, and filled to the brim with almost incomprehensible rage. Fused together with crust punk, black metal, and dissonant death metal, songs such as “Revelation of Mortality” and “Incessant Dissent” would be a mess, but Suffering Hour is a band that’s made its mark by pushing boundaries.
For as chaotically memorable and nightmarishly heavy as this EP is, it all starts to feel like a buildup to the massive climax of “Inexorable Downfall.” When that track finds its 4/4 moments, they break through the chaos with the ferocity of old Morbid Angel mixed with the more modern technical dissonance of Defacement. All in all, Impelling Rebirth wants to hurt you. My advice is to embrace the pain.
https://sufferinghour.bandcamp.com/album/impelling-rebirth
https://www.facebook.com/SufferingHourMetal/