Review of Disgorge - Consume the Forsaken

If I were to ask you which is the most technically annihilating brutal death band on the face of the earth today, and you give me an answer other than Disgorge, then I would have to inform you of your incorrectness by laughing hysterically at your answer. Because, quite frankly, no one even comes close to the sheer strength & density that Disgorge has begun to accumulate w/ their 3rd release "Consume the Forsaken"··

I'm gonna tell everyone who reads this right off the bat: This style of music is absolutely NOT for every metal fan. The first time you listen to it, it will go right over your head. Guaranteed. This is ultra-brutal death metal at skin-melting speeds. There literally has got to be 300 different guitar riffs in this album, all violently whirling around in a tight tornadic barrage of chunky palm-muting and flying harmonics. This is the 2nd disc that I own of this band, and I STILL cannot follow along to a single song on either album. I have no idea how Diego Sanchez can remember which riffs go where or when to speed up the tempo & timing, or when to slow down. To the untrained ear, this is going to come across as simply unlistenable. Trying to keep up is an utterly exhausting experience. I don't know of any other band like this. If you take your average 11 song death/grind album and put it on fast forward, you have 2 Disgorge songs. You most likely will not notice it immediately, but Diego is taking the "art" of playing guitar to an entirely new level. No, he is not Steve Vai. There are no solos. No flashy bullshit. He is all about downtuned, palm-muted pit riffs at blazing speed, and he crams about 20 or so into each song, displaying superb control over his weapon. It's incredible. And to actually find 3 other brutes in this universe that are able to keep up w/ their respective instruments of choice is another incredible feat in itself. Every song here contains overloading amounts of strength & pure ferocity. I recently had the enormous privilege of witnessing Disgorge's explosive power in a live set, and they executed everything perfectly. With all of the starting/stopping and direction changing going on in each song, you'd think somebody would fuck up somewhere at some time. No way. Ricky Myers on drums is a human drum machine. Mortician wishes they had this guy to pull off all of the hyper-speed blasts in their songs. All kinds of intricate percussive details are going on in the midst of the destruction. But you have to listen, listen well, and listen often. If you can master just listening to this, then all other music will seem ridiculously simple. And the listening process has become MUCH more enjoyable due to the supreme production on "Consume the Forsaken". Their previous 2 efforts leave quite a bit to be desired as far as being able to sort and distinguish certain instruments, and the sound just seemed rather "far away", if you know what I mean. Racine, WI seems to be the place to record an album if you want clean, heavy, and amazingly brutal sound for death metal. In the liner notes it says that it was recorded at Studio One in Racine, and I know I have read that name in other recent & well-produced death metal album inserts.

Without going too far into detail about the lyrics and vocals, I will just tell you that I am surprised at the layering of the toilet vocals and how it adds to the "evilness" of the material. The songs seem to have dropped the popular gore content and focused more on an anti-christ subject material. Not your typical blasphemous passages, these are very intelligent, well thought out and well written lyrics. Fantastic artwork, photography and packaging. Just a phenomenal album that has progressed leaps and bounds from their last.

Like I stated before, if you think you know technicality, heaviness, and speed, then listen to this and you will surely be put in your place. Controlled chaos and power is what this is. Being able to manipulate an F5 tornado like this and recite it perfectly time & time again deserves only the highest of marks. If you want to see the direction that ultra-brutal death metal has taken (while you were too busy listening to mall-core pop-tart metal or "melodic" material), then get this and make it a priority to absorb it. It may take several years, but I know for a fact that that is what Disgorge intended. And I will tell you this··..There is NOTHING like cruising through your local college campus w/ the windows down and THIS album blasting at ear-splitting volumes, and seeing the looks on the faces of all the MTV-watching, Abercrombie-clad, bleach-tipped, sandal-wearing clones & mall-goers that seem to populate so much of society these days. It's one of the added perks that come along w/ owning this jaw-dropping release··

Release Details

Disgorge

Consume the Forsaken

Comments

Related