(Once more we dig into DGR’s pre-festival archive of writings and today bring forth his review of a new album by the Sweden death metal band Absurdeity, which was released in February.)
This part of the year is one of our great opportunities to play catch-up with all the releases that we had absorbed into our collections over the years. The rivers are always overflowing on that front so it can seem a bit random, but the grab bag and shotgun approach has led to some wild weeks in terms of what we post around here. This one in particular is likely no different, and thus we take advantage of the time afforded to us to catch up with Sweden’s Absurdeity and their new album We Came, We Sawed, We Conquered.
Absurdeity is the project of Project Hate mainman Lord K. Philipson and long-running conspirator Jörgen Sandström, an exercise in creating straightforward and brutally focused death metal – in stark comparison to the expansive and humongous works that’ve taken place within the bounds of The Project Hate.
It is a wonder that K. Philipson has anything left in the tank after the multitude of year-over-year releases and ten-plus-minute songs that’ve been the hallmarks of his other project. But, there is something to be said to setting boundaries for yourself, and in the case of Absurdeity the goal was to create something raw and violent, and that is how we approach the aforementioned new album — as a collection of nine raw and violent songs that thankfully keep things concise and impactful, never straying anywhere over the four-minute mark.
Sometimes we aspire to a higher calling here at No Clean Singing, we bring projects under our wing because we admire what they’re doing or see something in their high-minded display of art vs consumable music that we feel must be shared. What purpose would there be in building up an internet bully pulpit otherwise? Then other times we answer to a greater calling that is as if it has to happen, a requirement based on site name alone and our love of impossibly stupid death metal at times. Otherwise, we would be bereft in our duties if we did not cover an album like We Came, We Sawed, We Conquered based solely off the fact that its second song is called “Slitting Throats, Fucking Goats”.
It is the avant-garde among us who lift our music and push it in newer and exciting directions to be diluted and absorbed into something approachable and lively further down the line, their influence felt throughout generations even though they themselves remain unsung. It is the brutally stupid who remind us that yes, we are still apes that like the sound of rocks smashing other rocks, and that blatant open assaults on the eardrums can be just as fun – which is where Absurdeity lie. If gore-obsessed hoarse-voiced groups like Six Feet Under can make a career out of it, Lord K. Phillipson and whoever joins him for the ride can use it as a place to exorcise their death metal demons.
Death metal projects like Ironmaster are the order of the day here; a sense of tightly-wound dynamic and songwriting be damned, this is all adrenaline-fueled with every element pushed as far forward as they can get it. Absurdeity waste no time either, as opener “Digging As Many Graves As My Hands Can Possibly Handle” – and if anybody is wondering this is par for the course for song titling; Absurdeity’s 2023 releases have a song among them titled “You Had Me At Hail Satan” – practically crashes through the starting gate with vocalist Jörgen Sandström bellowing up a storm.
As we mentioned before, project driver Lord K. Phillipson is also one of the main voices behind The Project Hate MCMXCIX, who have never met an over seven minute song that had a million parts in it that they didn’t like, so Absurdeity is an otherworldly entity by comparison, grinding through multiple death metal riffs and keeping it trim at about three and a half minutes average. In other words, Absurdeity is like being struck by a car in comparison. Which to be fair, is often how you feel after a few songs on this album close out as well, including the previously mentioned “Slitting Throats, Fucking Goats” which runs in pretty similar vein to the opening of “Digging Graves”. The true signal that you’ve changed songs is that it seems like the buzzsaw guitar stopped for a breath before somebody threw a drumkit through the window of the practice room to start the next song.
The collapse of a gravel quarry continues later in the album with sewage-dwelling bass-tone to open the two and a half minutes of “Bloodfire Obliteration”, which at song four is circle-pit anthem three for Absurdeity. It is a song constructed of few parts and each of those segments snaps together to create a death metal hurricane. “Bloodfire Obliteration” will blow your walls down, which is impressive for being the fourth song on an album, arriving after three other equally intense – and varied in minor iterations – songs before it places We Came, We Sawed, We Conquered as one of those releases that will play out like getting into multiple streetfights twenty minutes in.
The directly following “Cascading Torment And Funeral Masses” is as if “Bloodfire” before it never really stopped as Absurdeity sprints through another slab’s worth of death metal riffwork as if trapped in a tire rolling downhill. “Gore Harvest Revelation” even breaks out the redneck stomp for a more drum-driven affair, played at high speed so your leg can snap trying to keep up.
“Rotten And Forgotten” at song eight – of nine! – is where this album discovers that it does have a sense of mid-tempo groove and can slow down a little bit. Prior to that, every song is constantly pricking at the senses and will sand your face down to a shiny, smooth sheen on your skull. It’s not often you look for the mid-tempo-ish track like “Rotten And Forgotten” to be your savior but We Came, We Sawed, We Conquered is a lot like having a mountain fall over on top of you. The one breath before the next cavalcade of rocks is salvation in that regard.
It’s easy to treat something like We Came, We Sawed, We Conquered as being fairly critic-proof because it is very open about its one-dimensional ideals and equally one dimensional approach. Doing and saying are two different things though, because for all the good talk one can have about a project being an outlet without a zeroed-in focus you can still end up creating music best befit for testing against garbage disposals. Absurdeity, for as ‘absurd’ as it is, does have dedication behind it; otherwise, the rock-breaking stupidity that it makes into its altar wouldn’t align properly. Things would just collapse and your album would be a pile of stone.
Absurdeity’s experience in grandiose death metal loans itself to the trimmed-down battle-ridden assault form well, and the sometimes overly enthusiastic death metal titling allows the band breathing room to move from death metal staple to death metal vanguard without focusing too much on how they got there. Multiple songs within We Came, We Sawed, We Conquered play out as alternate-universe twins of the song just before it, but at twenty-eight-some-odd minutes this an album better listened to as a summary of all its parts than broken down into piece-by piece singles. It’s the overall overwhelming attack that makes this an enjoyable release – save for the two sub-three-minute songs “Bloodfire Obliteration” and closer “Faceripping Death”, you could do well for yourself with those tracks at any time.
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