La Cripta del Marciume, questo il titolo definitivo della rubrica, è di nuovo in onda Venerdì 13 con una puntata dedicata a Bret Hoffman. Tra i marciumi presentati Atheretic (Can), un’edizione deluxe degli Autopsy, un classico di W.H. Hodgson, il gioco di ruolo Lamentations of the Flame Princess, il film degli Sgorbions, il nuovo LP autoprodotto dei Blood (Ger) e poi si vedrà.
The world is rapidly shifting to videos for published content and I admit it’s way faster to record live with a phone than to type a post (making professional videos with editing and all that shit is a different matter of corpse).
For those that understand Italian, I am going live every firday night on Facebook with my column “schifi, marciumi e ignoranze”. Shortly thereafter all live clips will be uploaded on the YouTube channel. I won’t stop writing posts and the idea of a published new issue of NA still exists, but not before some months.
Get in touch here if you wish.
018 Dunkelheit Produktionen
Dunkelheit from Germany is probably one of my favorite labels around today. In 11 or so years of activity they keep up a great job at releasing great bands like Tetragrammacide, Blood, Goat Semen, Abatuar etc. for about one hundred releases, all of which caring, just like I do, more for music that pushes boundaries of noise and sickness than mere “genres” alone. They also maintain this tradition of sober, symbolic (or apparently so) layouts, which over time have managed to contribute to the label’s branding identity. Subduer are an interesting new project from Germany that mix elements of power electronics with the chaotic J-Readesque disharmony of extreme Death/Black, some sort of Terror Organ meets Conqueror kind of dry brew. 4 tracks could be not enough to completely savor and dissect the potential of this band but there is enough hisses, samples, drone hammering and manic screams to fulfill a trip to the gym late in the evening. Good stuff as usual, worth checking out.
2018 Deaf Death Husky Records / Eyes Of The Dead
Italy’s most recent goregrind band I know of (together with the newborn Golem Of Gore), this 2018 7-track tape is a small jewel to look at, neat and classy in its simplicity, I kinda really dig the oriental minimalistic approach to the design the band adopted in both version of this release. Yakisoba’s approach to goregrind on the contrary do actually work for the opposite reason – its efficacy is in being analogue and messy as fuck. It might not be blistering fast but it’s raw and has all the proper garage reverb that is mandatory in this music. The line between sloppy and unrefined might be slippery for the uninitiated but it’s really the difference between a good punk album and a high school jam. This is a band for those into noisegore which is actually played, every hiss and pop and imprecision add to its value. The rest? Gargling roars, samples, Dead Infection-like 2-chord riffs and all the good fun this genres still offers.
I have been chewing at the new EP “Puncturing the Grotesque” for a few days now and there’s this song “Gas Mask Lust” that just creeps within the folds of your brain. I was stuck in the traffic this morning and just put it on loop, over and over. I started to think about all the “Autopsy – inspired bands” we have in today’s scene and how they just seem to catch just a facet of the multi tentacled and multi eyed beast that is Autopsy. How is that that they always manage to stand head and shoulder above all the rest of the Death Metal underworld, every single time they release a new album?
That made me think a little, and the usual answers started to shower in.
Listening to an Autopsy song is like being in the perfect storm. How is that that their backbone is punk as fuck, the single chords so raw, the vocals messy and out of place, but at the same time you understand that if these guys were not musicians with 40 years of experience they could just not play this shit? The orchestral taste in which screams and solos are arranged are a bit like having GG Allin and the London Symphony Orchestra at the same time in some sort of deranged jigsaw that, ultimately and bafflingly, makes sense in the most disturbing way.
From the underground Death Metal perspective, these guys have been in there forever. They never had the big hype of Death or the worldwide recognition of Morbid Angel, but yet they are one of the proto-everything bands that just started the whole Death Metal concept (and in my opinion they’re still the band that better embodies it). They are the prototypical antonym of “derivative”. They took the ugliest parts of rock, metal and punk and sewed the rotting chunks with images of utter horror and sleaziness without just focusing on literature and movies, but digging deeper into the most nightmarish essence of humankind from the broadest spectrum. They had this vision in a time of primordial chaos when there was none. Autopsy is relentless, untainted and untamed horror in its purest form, that is, in other words, DEATH METAL.
That is basically what makes them so special: Autopsy is the alpha and omega of Death Metal, complete upon itself. They sum up EVERYTHING conceived in this corner of music. It’s like putting your whole collection in a slow juicer to remove all the fluff. I still believe you could have their records and nothing else on your shelf, and that still would be a respectable, flawless DM collection.
Long Death the Kings.