The death metal revival does not ever have to go away. It is an era where the riff is king, and brutality is back with a vengeance. Many albums that have come out this year alone have been ripe with sickness, festering in slime, and adorned with decay. And while 2020 has been a shit year in most aspects, some utterly disgusting death metal has been blasted out in chucks into our ears.
Glorious Depravity is the latest and greatest to enter the death metal arena. However, no one in the band is a newcomer to extreme metal. Featuring Doug Moore(Pyrrhon, Weeping Sores, Seputus), Matt Mewton(Woe, Belus), George Paul(Mutilation Rites, Overdose), John McKinney(Cleanteeth), and Chris Grigg(Woe), Glorious Depravity is a death metal supergroup not to be taken lightly. And their upcoming album Ageless Violence is hungry for flesh.
Here we have the album opener “Ocean of Scabs.” A nightmare of a title, for a nightmare of a song. A quick guitar riff opens the track and the sounds of death flood in. It is something ominous and horrific, like a crawling terror.
A quote from Chris Grigg:
"’Ocean Of Scabs’ captures a descent into otherworldly horror and suffering. Its music and lyrics depict a vision of vileness most pure: a swarming maelstrom of purulence that confounds and overwhelms the senses. It is a great joy to use this brief glimpse into our madness as the introduction to Ageless Violence."
Maddening it is. The lyrics embrace the song fully with lines like, “Plasma congealing on obscene coasts of bone / The crust-crested fruit of infinite spleens” and, “The sickly sluicing of cicatrix waves / Horizons bemired in overripe gleam / Its carpet of roaches, all hissing in pain.” It is an introduction into a nightmare world of gore, sickness, and marrow that sets the scene for the rest of the record.
As a track, “Ocean of Scabs” is brutalizing. A slab in the vein of old school death metal, Glorious Depravity play this like it is the 90s. The track is pulverizing and hammers forth like a bloody battering ram. The guitars and bass howl at times, but mostly keep it low. The drums rumble and crash like waves and the vocals are nasty as hell. It is the perfect introduction to Glorious Depravity.
Another quote from Grigg:
“Ageless Violence is the result of our studies of extremity as practiced by the legendary death metal pioneers of past decades, especially the American masters. Though we have each spent years pushing boundaries in our respective projects, we feel that this collaboration has sharpened our songwriting skills and enhanced our musical athleticism. We are all stronger, faster, and more ferocious than we were before, and we are confident that our work will exalt the progenitors of the art while standing as a unique, disgusting exemplar of modern brutality."
Ageless Violence will be released by the mighty Translation Loss. Preorder digital here and physical here.
Glorious Depravity Bandcamp | Facebook | Twitter
