Even though I’m generally very willing to give new sounds an ear (like all of us here on Veil Of Sound are) I must admit that that there’s just so much of it that most promo invitations in my mailbox immediately get thrown into the trash. Cool, this sounds interesting! Delete anyway. But what if Sentient Ruin Laboratories use the specific word “implausible” to describe the extremity of a Death Metal record? - Gentlemen, you had my curiosity. Now you have my attention!
A couple of weeks ago the chance to finally after decades of worship see Autopsy live for the first time drove me to the most Death Metal festival I’ve been to in ages, with over twenty bands almost exclusively within the genre. Of course this led me to contemplate about the question which variations of it I actually love the most. Naturally the answer is super easy. And on second thought there’s absolutely no easy answer at all. But what unites most of my favorites - be it the modern fusions of (Dissonant) Death with Avantgarde, Jazz and Classical Music as well as said all-time-classics Autopsy and also cult bands I totally slept on back in the day like Demilich – is the uncompromising will to follow a formula to its sick extremes with complete disregard to any listener’s possible comfort zone.
Ok, you could just translate this into the eternal standard goal of all extreme music - to get even more extreme, to be the hardest heaviest ever. Which in itself is a bit tiring, given that in Metal as a whole this competition has been going on for half a century now. So it’s pretty surprising - and very exciting - when every now and then you can still stumble upon a group which somehow makes you feel like that little green teenager discovering the most rebellious shit ever. Enter Disimperium from Oregon, who blast out the most ferociuosly traumatizing bastard of Death Metal with sprinkles of Black Metal and Grindcore.
“Grand Insurgence Upon Despotic Altars” feels like a primitively heightened take on Morbid Angel’s Altars Of Madness, one which doesn’t care if its guitar riffs are actually distinguishable, one which sometimes sounds as if someone just randomly stapled two different sonic excesses on top of each other. No, this isn’t a catchy record by any means. Everything just happens way too fast and obliterating to properly comprehend it. The first time you notice that something really sticks you’re already in the fourth track without knowing it, because in this simultanously eventful and amorphous avalanche of indeed implausible brutality there’s not even an idiot-proof way to tell when you have entered a new track without checking your player. Are you still suffering in “Manifested Primordial Torment”, urged to “Carry Forth the Edict of Annihilation” or already trapped in the “Sepulchral Mind Prison”? Only “I, Servitor of Naught” can tell!
That song marks one of the few instances where the slower drums and a fade into pitch-black Dark Ambient give you at least something related to a little breather. Yet after heating up Dante’s oven again for a minute the following track mercilessly pushes you back into the top doneness pit of hellfire.
A crucial part of the inhumane appeal of this album is caused by the vocal performance. Always on the brink of overcooking the gutturals are served in a way which reminds me of Mizmor; hollow, cavernous and impossible to blind out, always jumping back into your face. They are the jaws of a rabid beast in permanent onslaught mode. Disimperium are tireless hunters and you are their prey. The final shock of their debut is when after just half an hour they suddenly just stop and let you go, wounded yet alive. No, the playing time isn’t too short, because too much more of this might cause unhealthy, if not not even lethal exhaustion. Death by Death Metal. Almost sounds tempting, but it’s way too soon for that! On the other hand this gloriously sick defibrillator probably also works wonders to jump-start your heart again if you’re flatlining.
