By: Aaron Pickford
Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: March 27, 2012
Label: The Innervenus Music Collective
‘Given the name of the band, Vulture, the music on offer here is a din of a rapacious nature, aggressive and imperious, preying on your senses like a pact of ravenous wolves. Showing a tyrannous disregard of the listener’s audible oppression, this Pittsburgh
‘Oblivious to Ruin’ CD//DD track listing
1). This Beautiful Infection (7:10)
2). Oblivious To Ruin (6:07)
3). Dead Sea (6:30)
4). Long I Crawl (5:36)
5). Coming Storm (4:42)
6). Bedridden (5:37)
7). Apathetic Life (4:47)
Vulture is
Justin Erb | Vocals
Gene Fihkman | Guitars
Garrett Twardesky | Guitars
Justin Bach | Bass
Kelly Gabany Z Drums
The Review:
Given the name of the band, Vulture, the music on offer here is a din of a rapacious nature, aggressive and imperious, preying on your senses like a pact of ravenous wolves. Showing a tyrannous disregard of the listener’s audible oppression, this Pittsburgh
Starting off the album, with a dark sound bite from the movie The Exorcist III ‘I believe in murder, I believe in pain, I believe in cruelty…’, it couldn’t be more appropriate, for this dark and disturbing blend of sludge/doom, ‘Oblivious to Ruin’ is carrion so nasty that only a Vulture would feed upon it. This record is usurious, in that it goes beyond the realm of reason, due to the sheer volume of searing riffs and aural bombardment that is on offer. With Justin Erb, the embodiment of raw aggression, perhaps even the Devil incarnate. The band have unearthed a gem of a vocalist, with his sneering and sniggering vocal performance, Justin’s screams could well be the result of man in genuine pain, seemingly with his spleen about to explode. This track and indeed the album is a Beautiful but nasty infection, with the only cure being evisceration.
From the outset it is clear that the production values on this record are huge, everything sounds raw and nasty, what’s more everything can be heard in the mix, the left and right channel guitars resonating like a circular saw cutting through bone, the bass causing high-powered beams of electronic waves, resulting in the heating or burning of the skin. And if that wasn’t enough the drum work is just devastating. Vulture charge out of the block with vicious aplomb, with Gene Fikhman and Garrett Twardesky’s guitars, doing the seemingly impossible and creating a unique sound of their own. What they do to great effect is subtlety interweave between variations of painfully uncompromising riffs, with Bassist Justin Bach and drummer Kelly Gabany accentuating each putrid groove to disturbing effect, highlighting not only the viciousness of the sludge metal genre, but also the often misrepresented complexities of the genre too.
This album will indeed leave you bedridden; this album is Vulture’s own unique version of ‘hobbling’, the effect of which is to ensure that you, the listener are unable able to run way. This album is a work of abrasive beauty and highly recommended. A must buy for any fans of sludge/doom metal.
