We’re back on our monthly bullshit here at Death’s Door. So prepare your bodies. It’s only going to get spicier from here.
May was a sneaky great month for death metal. While the major popular players in the genre have mainly used June for their new releases, the underground thrived, churning out excellent releases all over the place. We’ve documented a few here for your enjoyment.
Partake in the foulness. Death metal. Forever.
-JA
Cream of the Crop
Weeping Sores - The Convalescence Agonies
I am a simple man who has but few basic rules when it comes to choosing what music to focus my attention on in a given month. One of those rules reads thusly: If Doug Moore is attached to it, listen immediately. It’s a rule that has yet to fail me. From Pyrrhon and Scarcity to Seputus and Weeping Sores, the man has not been attached to a project that has been anything less than insanely interesting and wholly engaging. The third outing from the latter above-mentioned project, another collaboration with Seputus drummer Stephen Schwegler, reaches the lofty heights of its predecessors through a rich tapestry of brutal and beautiful sounds that are nothing short of spectacular.
From the jump, The Convalescence Agonies presents listeners with a crunchy, slightly off-kilter, and doom-laden composition that features Moore’s pained screaming to eerie effect. Throughout the record Moore is an absolute monster on both guitar and vocals, creating sonic spaces that feels as agonizing as the injuries the man has been tirelessly rehabbing during the process of making this record. “Arctic Summer” feels like a perfect amalgamation of all this album does well, setting the tone for what ends up being in my opinion the project’s best outing yet.
There’s little here that doesn’t tickle the ear and ignite the senses, and I can easily recommend yet another Doug Moore project. The man’s skill and creativity are boundless and seem to only increase with time. The Convalescence Agonies is another master stroke from two brilliant musical minds and despite the starts, stops, and pains suffered through in its creation, I’m very glad it exists.
-JA
Best of the Rest
For The Pyres - At the Pyres of Sin
Hi there!
You, yeah you!
You’re looking a bit lethargic, perhaps the summer’s heat has gotten to you as well?
Not to worry! For the Pyres are here to get your blood pumping with some thick, filthy HM-2 powered buzz-saw riffs, nasty growls, pounding drums, snarling growls and riiiiiiifffs.
Seriously, the guitar tone and on this thing is thicker than a Neanderthalers brow ridge, and will grant you the primeval valor to gird up your loins and go into that foul-smelling spelunk to find shelter, Smilodons and cave bears be damned. These guitars could actually be weaponized in the next iteration of whatever chainsaw gore flick your peculiar teenage relative likes just a little too much. There’s a nasty, phlegmy quality to the vocals, reminding of Behemoth or Dormant Ordeal, and some of the riffs here invoke Carnation’s excellent Cursed Mortality, aside from the tried-and-true (and a bit tiresome) Entombed and Bloodbath namedrops, quintessential or not. There is even a surprise late album atmospheric banger: “Void” brings some sweet melodic riffing and intermittently slows things down to a nasty, menacing crawl, giving some extra space to those gnarly, dripping death roars. It even has a spooky, atmospheric outro!
The second half of the album has claimed my attention most convincingly thus far, with especially “Where Icons Turn to Dust” and the closing title track unfailingly summoning a slavery smile in all their gore-y low-browed glory.
If you like your Swedeath classic but with a lick of modern gloss, a sheen of atmospheric varnish, and a modernized sonic finish look no further and pick up the chonky debut album of these sawing Swedes, it’s all you need in a good piece of musical hardware.
-BK
Ominous Ruin - Requiem
Here I am again, once more writing up an album twice in one month. After covering Requiem for Editors’ Picks, I was reluctant to cover it here as well but there really wasn’t any other choice for me and I certainly couldn’t let this column go up without any mention of Ominous Ruin’s explosive leap forwards. But you already know what I think about this album (and how much I like it) so what would I write about here? So, in sitting down to jot this entry, I’ve decided not to write about Requiem at all but rather about the band’s previous release, 2021’s Amidst Voices that Echo in Stone.
Amidst Voices is a great album. It has a super appealing and forceful attitude, still relevant and snappy four years later. I specifically still love its breakneck dedication to its solos and the “dry” way they are produced, creating a sort of razor-sharp timbre to them. But where Requiem stands well above this release is in structure, both track and album structure. Amidst Voices is very much a collection of tracks, not only because none of them really flow into each other but also in their approach to composition and execution. The tracks are, of course, similar, since they were all composed and executed by the same band. But that’s about where the cohesion ends; beyond just the absence of explicit callbacks (which are not necessary for an album to feel cohesive), the tracks on Amidst Voices just don’t feel unique enough. Ironically, that uniqueness, the character of each track, is what ends up giving albums that feeling of a bigger whole, as the identity of each track communicates something, well, unique to the release and contributes to the bigger picture.
This is in stark contrast to Requiem, where that tension between a bigger whole and the individual attributes of each track is pristinely maintained. Instead of a collection of great ideas and killer licks, the tracks on Requiem are individual expressions of the album’s “color” or mood, each one a necessary elaboration on the main theme. Here’s an experiment that will help you feel what I’m saying, instead of just reading it: listen to Amidst Voices all the way through to, and included, the fourth track, “Chrysalis of Flesh”. See how you feel about its, admittedly awesome, bass experimentation. And then go to Requiem and listen all the way to “Divergent Anomaly” which, in many ways, serves the same purpose and see how you feel then. When I did this in the leadup to writing this piece, I could admittedly tell the difference; on Requiem, I was engaged with the flow that brought me to this place while with Amidst Voices, I merely felt the need for the next cool idea. In that sense, Requiem is more of an album, a work that stands taller for standing on all of its disparate parts.
-Eden Kupermintz
Lust Hag - Irrevocably Drubbed
There’s something fundamentally, deliciously evil about Lust Hag’s music. Eleanor Harper transforms the beautiful fury of black metal into pummeling serenades of destruction that balance orchestral elegance with bloody aggression. Her sound is both a raw assault on the senses and a hymn of resilience. With Irrevocably Drubbed, the battle cry of Lust Hag reaches another level of grandeur and intensity.
I can rarely visualize anything when listening to music, instead settling in a black pool of emotion and textures. But Irrevocably Drubbed is so evocative that my mind summons images of blood pooling on a frozen forest floor, a haunting homage to terror felt in the primal quiet of nature. The feeling is stark, feral, and yet strangely beautiful. Stunning pitch-black melodies crescendo into death metal riffs that evoke OSDM, breaking into a murderous explosion of filth. The balance between cinematic melodies, meaty riffs, and Harper’s feral screams creates an onslaught of ferociousness and elegance that cannot be denied. The grandeur and aggression are utterly unique and utterly obsession-inducing.
It’s one thing to draw inspiration from across the metal family tree, but Lust Hag does so with impressive expertise and a clear love of all things heavy. The grooves and riffs of death metal drive Irrevocably Drubbed with devastating force, creating earworm moments that will haunt your brain for months, if not forever. Tracks like “Stifled Glare” are deliriously fun, pummeling romps that capture the heart-racing energy that made us fall in love with death metal in the first place. Yet the sinister blanket of black metal is a constant presence, creeping in with eerie ambiance and vicious melody. The darkly haunting beauty that drapes over tracks like “Feed the Mother Monolith” feels like it’s tapping into the very roots of metal, if not a primal force of fury that predates us all.
Once again, Lust Hag has emerged from the wilderness with unrelenting fury delivered with unceasing style and skill. There is simply nothing else like Irrevocably Drubbed.
-Bridget Hughes
Gutrectomy - ANGST
Have a few IQ points to spare? Or perhaps you’ve been listening to Gutrectomy long enough that IQ no longer matters. Their signature style of beatdown/slam, now heavier than ever on ANGST (all caps feels appropriate here). The pummeling album is all gas, no brakes in the best way possible.
You’re here for 3 simple reasons: indecipherable squealing vocals, blastbeats, and breakdowns. ANGST is an all-you-can-eat buffet of the sonic candy that threatens your hearing, your intelligence, and your ability to navigate decent society. It’s loud, ridiculously heavy fun – perfect for summer slams.
-BH
Larcenia Roe - Extraction
Unique Leaders Records continues to host some of the heaviest hitters on deathcore. Less than a year after their debut, slamming deathcore dealers Larcenia Roe deliver another tooth-cracking album. Like labelmates Vulvodynia (vocalist Lwandile Prusent makes an appearance), Larcenia Roe are a slamming deathcore band that emphasizes the “slamming.” Blastbeats emerge with frightening velocity, bludgeoning the listener and anything else that stands in their path. But Extraction comes with a fair share of twists, such as a shrieking vocal style that borrows heavily from black metal and electronic flourishes that add a jarring atmosphere. Not recommended for anyone afraid of the dentist.
-BH
Hacked Up - Sporadic Genocidal Warfare
I’ll listen to any band that thanks .357 Homicide in their album description. Their strain of extremely lo-fi and downtuned slam has long been one of my favorite takes on the subgenre, and luckily, the latest from Hacked Up more than delivers that filthy sound. Imagine slam having a demon baby with goregrind: nasty gurgling vocals, murky guitar riffs, and ridiculously catchy swampy grooves. Sporadic Genocidal Warfare feels like wading through a bog filled with blood, and I mean that as a compliment.
-BH