(We present DGR’s review of a new EP from the nautical brutal death metal band Submerged, which was released last month by New Standard Elite.)
We’ve been buried in an absolute gamut of albums over the past few months, and as is our usual tradition we have tried and failed to keep ourselves afloat in the flood of music. One day there will be maps drawn with shipwreck masts poking out of the water and one of them will just be the NoCleanSinging logo. Fitting then, given that today’s subjects are the San Diego, California brutal death metal group Submerged and their new EP Resurfacing Nautical Ruin.
A newer project of sorts, having been formed in 2023, Submerged were quick to break the dam on material, and after a demo in 2023, proceeded to pour out an album in 2024 titled Tortured At The Depths. Today’s EP Resurfacing Nautical Ruin – unleashed upon the world in mid-April via brutality merchants New Standard Elite – is the continued tale in Submerged’s torrent of music.
Gather up your diving gear then because we’re about to take a dip in the ocean of disgusting bass guitar tone, rattle-can snare, and vocals emerging from hydrothermal vents themselves for three songs and almost twelve minutes of singular violence and tremendous brutality.
The groups inhabiting the modern day brutal death metal sphere have blurred the lines between it, slam, and other forms of extreme metal so that the debate taking place as to which is which is almost nonsensical. We’ve shot way past the point of “I’ll know it when I hear it” and the only valid response seems to be a nodding recognition of auditory assault taking place in its stead.
Even with a much shorter collection of music than an album would call for, Resurfacing Nautical Ruin will still leave the average listener feeling as if they’ve gone through multiple rounds with a full-length album. Such is often the case with this sort of densely packed and relentless attack that is coupled within the brutal death metal genre – if the mouthful song titles alone don’t cover enough ground on that front. There’s already more words here in the song titles for three songs than Wolfheart will allow for by the time they reach the seventh song on any of their full-lengths. We’re not quite in medical prognostication territory but a song title such as “Inhaling Of Subaquatic Consciousness” to open up the gates of this EP serves more purpose than you’d initially ascribe to it.
Completely undecipherable vocals, scratchy guitar tone that makes one question whether or not a Brillo pad can be used as an amplifier, jangling bass, and an inhuman amount of action on the drums for a completely monstrous flood of sound that three people shouldn’t have the ability to create are the order of the day on Resurfacing Nautical Ruin. There’s enough energy unleashed in the two and a half minutes of opener “Inhaling The Subaquatic Consciousness” that you could power a small city. That song moves through more parts that most newer cars seem to have, steadily surging forward with zero questions as to what lies in front of it. To any outsiders of the genre it would seem patently ridiculous just how much effort goes into a song dedicated to being so braindead, but that conundrum is what gives power to large sects of the brutal death sphere.
Follower “Riddled With Intravenous Decay” for instance takes a similar approach but bolts on one of the dumbest slow grooves the album is capable of. Its rare that you’d be thankful for a quarter of the song being audio sample but given just how much abuse each segment of the band is unleashing on this EP, “Riddled With Intravenous Decay’s” opening sample is your one chance to breathe before you’re lowered back into the depths to allow the band to crash over you again and again.
“Excruciating the Deconsecrated Populace” doesn’t stray far from that mark either, as it is another extended battering of drums and bass guitar dominating the world before the actual guitars come scraping in on the fringes of the song. Shifting from groove to groove with a bevy of blastbeats as your transitional bits is one way to write a song, and it’s the one that Submerged have taken completely to heart. There’s enough energy generated in any one song alone on this EP, and doing it three times guarantees that Resurfacing Nautical Ruin is going to exist in a boil for long after the EP stops.
One does not turn to a genre such as this, which has long been codified as gore- and horror-obsessed, for anything overwhelmingly brilliant. We are not speaking to a higher construct here; Submerged are playing a genre that is about as “caveman smashing rocks” as “caveman smashing rocks” can get. The leagues-overcomplicated playing to create something that can only be communicated as a whole lot of energy, not a lot of songcraft, buoyed by caveman grunting as its modus operandi, is how a subset of the brutal death metal scene operates.
Just like how it “can cost a lot of money to look this cheap”, it takes a lot of effort on Resurfacing Nautical Ruin for Submerged to be so gloriously stupid. This is music driven by headbanging and crowd movement, that brutality acting as an exchange and transfer between musician and listener. It is meant to overwhelm, and the urge to move is passed down from survival instinct more than any sense that a moment in a song is good. You move because the music commands you to. Resurfacing Nautical Ruin is twelve minutes of utter violence that will serve its brutal death altar well in its three songs of genre-worship.
https://newstandardelite.bandcamp.com/album/submerged-resurfacing-nautical-ruin
https://www.instagram.com/submergedbdm/