ALBUM REVIEW: Extremity - "Extremely Fucking Dead"

By: Ernesto Aguilar

Album Type: Full length

Date Released: 07/04/2017

Label: 20 Buck Spin

In this first release by the group, you have what sounds like an incredibly promising start. The playing is top-shelf vicious. Carpet bombed in a death metal growl, the songs are forceful in delivery and unyielding in lyrics.

"Extremely Fucking Dead" CD//CS//DD//LP track listing:

1. Intro (Mortuus est Valde)

2. Crepuscular Crescend

3. Bestial Destiny

4. Chalice of Pus

5. Fatal Immortality

6. Extremely Fucking Dead

The Review:

Yelp is truly eBay for reviews. You can discover the most random stuff assessed by a less-than-forgiving public. There, you can even find a list of the best San Francisco bars that play death metal. Yes, it is a real list and is a testament to how much the Bay Area, for all its contradictions, tourists and big red hop-on-and-off buses, loves extreme music.

Beyond that, Northern California has been an epicenter of sorts for metal for going on 30 years or more. With the debut of the Oakland-based Extremity, you have a group that is reflective of such history. This is not the first band for its members by any stretch.

From Agalloch to Vastum, Cretin to Necrosic, among others, the experience that makes up Extremity is sure to prompt attention. Impressive acts, no doubt. In this first release by the group, you have what sounds like an incredibly promising start. The playing is top-shelf vicious. Carpet bombed in a death metal growl, the songs are forceful in delivery and unyielding in lyrics. Herein tracks like "Bestial Destiny" are impressive, with traces of grind undercutting a faithful death blueprint. Throughout the debut, there is ample space for all-star drummer Aesop Dekker, who counts Ludicra and Worm Ouroboros among his work, to ballast the carnage.

What makes Extremity such a fascinating addition to death metal, beyond its collective resumes and membership, is its potential. For instance, its similarity to Scolex, bassist Erika Osterhout’s other death/doom project, is glancing at best. As such, Extremity melds some of the exceptional qualities of what its members bring. Osterhout’s contributions on songs like "Chalice of Pus" are as you might expect, searing. In fact, the whole team has it’s A-game on for all six tracks.

If you love the style, Extremity does it in a fashion you’re sure to enjoy. Haters might call it a touch of playing it safe. A longer listen reveals how complex the songs really are. "Extremely Fucking Dead" isn’t the 99-cent-bin death metal, because its collaborators are far from it. Together, the group hints that their best is yet to come.

"Extremely Fucking Dead" is available here

Band info: facebook

Vastum - ‘Hole Below’ (Album Review)

By: Daniel Jackson

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 6/11/2015

Label: 20 Buck Spin

Each member plays so well into all of the others’ strengths that the album feels more like one gigantic being, lurching and smashing in unified movement, rather than five separate pieces trying their best to come together.

Hole Below’ CD//LP//CS//DD track listing:

1. Sodomitic Malevolence

2. Amniosis

3. In Sickness And In Death

4. Intrusions

5. Hole Below (A Dream Of Ritual Abuse)

6. Empty Breast

Vastum is:

Daniel Butler | Vocals

Leila Abdul-Rauf | Guitar, Vocals

Shelby Lermo | Guitar

Luca Indrio | Bass

Adam Perry | Drums

The Review:

As I’m writing this, Vastum’s new album, ‘Hole Below’ has been out for over a month and the praise for it has been substantial. In the interest of telling a complete story about my feelings toward the album, I didn’t really get it at first. My initial thoughts were essentially that it sounded fantastic recording-wise, but that the production was something of a masking agent for a very by-the-numbers death metal album. While there’s no denying that the album is very straightforward from a compositional standpoint, that simplicity also betrays just how clever this album is.

It took a number of listens to really sink in, to the point that when I first tried writing about the album, I was ready to work from the standpoint that some of my fellow metal writers had been dazzled by what is an unquestionably fantastic production job. The truth of it is that I was simply late to the dance in terms of understanding just how strong these songs really are. Vastum seem to have graduated from the Bolt Thrower school of knowing that it can be just as effective making each and every note count as it can be when working with a much more technical formula.

If I have any complaint about the album now, it’s that I wish there was more dark, melodic guitar leads like the one woven throughout the album’s closing song “Empty Breast”. Even there, the leads are deceptively simple, but they’re insanely satisfying from a song writing standpoint. It’s one of many reasons I’m glad I stopped writing that first draft, knowing now that I would have regretted being so negative about an album that didn’t deserve it. Indeed, the whole of the album is absolutely devastating, sonically, and the album’s reserved tempo is one of its strengths rather than a liability. That refusal to go full speed ahead in the drumming allows the songs breathing room rhythmically, and Adam Perry’s loose, natural style behind the kit has a lot to do with why ‘Hole Below’ is such a massive success.

In truth, Vastum is a band with a musical chemistry that very few death metal bands possess. Each member plays so well into all of the others’ strengths that the album feels more like one gigantic being, lurching and smashing in unified movement, rather than five separate pieces trying their best to come together. ‘Hole Below’ is showing up on a lot of year end lists, and I finally get why that is. If you’ve tried this album already and found yourself wondering what the hype was all about. Do yourself a favor and give it more time. I’m happy that I did.

“Hole Below” is available digitally here and a CD/LP/CS copy here.

Band info: Facebook

Vastum - Patricidal Lust (Album Review)

 

 

Album Type : Full Length

Date Released : 12/11/2013

Label : 20 Buck Spin

PATRICIDAL LUST, album track listing :

1) Libidinal Springs 06:06

2) Enigma of Disgust 07:10

3) 3AM in Agony 04:53

4) Incel 06:39

5) Patricidal Lust 05:30

6) Repulsive Arousal 06:52

Bio :

Once again the plodding, pulverization of this deviant San Franciscan VASTUM horde -- a pack of deviants hailing from such acts as Acephalix, Necrot, Hammers of Misfortune and other Bay Area underworld collectives -- will ooze forth via their 20 Buck Spin comrades, who exposed the band’s penetrating mid-paced exploration of filthifying death tones and riffage, as well as the darker and lustful side of human nature, through their thundering 2011-released debut LP, Carnal Law. The newly-aborted follow-up, seeping in filth and fist-clenched lunacy, bears the title Patricidal Lust

Review :

San Francisco's Vastum play grimy Death / Doom, the likes of which act like an inverted magnet that could set your moral compass into free-form rotation. Anchored in the low end, and probably the depths of hell, theirs is a sound that lurches and shuffles as a tribute to sickness. 20 Buck Spin is putting out their latest album, 'Patricidal Lust', and that label knows what's up. This record has had its mouth rammed full of groove, sewn up tight and choked to death on the stuff.

'Libidinal Spring' sets us in motion on a voyage of the damned, like a tugboat across the river Styx. Eerie intros are par for the course on most stuff of this ilk, but the band outdoes themselves here. The track then ushers in some really satisfying slow motion crunch. A lot of the time the sound gets lost in the rawness, and that's fine, especially for bands like this. But here the sound is crisp and you can absorb every sick lick, and every demented uttering. Great vocals, suitably filthy but mixed well with spoken parts too.

'Enigma of Disgust' airs more upon the slow Death side of the spectrum, great guitar work abounds and the drums switch up the pace with ease. The main riff is a catchy chug that is never at risk of being dumb, and it never outstays its welcome either. There's no guyliner here, folks - just some nose to the grindstone, meat and potatoes weight. Which gets the thumbs up around these here parts.

Another excellent cut is the suitably DM titled 'Repulsive Arousal'. Possibly the heaviest offering on the album, the opening sequence kicks real ass, all slow and putrid. The main riff is more great Death and Doom butchery (meant entirely as a compliment), with some real body to it. It's a brutal track that climaxes in even more brutal fashion; the finale of double bass will re-arrange your spine through your ears if played at suitable volume.

If you liked Autopsy's tremendous 'The Headless Ritual' from slightly earlier this year, you'll seriously dig this Vastum record. It ticks all the boxes, and might just end up putting you in one. A morose headbanger's delight, grab it while it's suitably lacking in the fresh, if you catch my drift.

Words by : Matt Fitton

You can buy it here

 

For more information :

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Vastum/440192535391
http://www.20buckspin.com
http://www.facebook.com/20buckspin
http://twitter.com/20buckspinlabel