Best of 2023

 8) Cattle Decapitation - Terrasite

I first got into Cattle Decapitation with To Serve Man, and really only because the album art was fucking brutal. This was the same year I picked up Impaled's Mondo Medicale which had a cover so obscene the record company needed to make a "mall record store acceptable version." I was picking albums simply by looking at the cover. If it made me wretch a little, I'd drop allowance money on some new brutality. Very mature I know.

Cattle Decapitation has come a long way since 2002. I dusted off To Serve Man and while I still really enjoy the riffs and those gurgly brutal death metal vocals, it is a largely unpolished album, very much a garage rock approach to death-grind.

Terrasite is grown up big boy death-grind. The musicianship, composition, production, are all polished chrome and razor sharp. Upon saying that I can see someone walking away from that description with a negative perception toward this album. Death-grind is largely about gut slop and sewage, and it's natural to expect some rough around the edges qualities to the resulting product. I just think I'm so enamored by the journey these men have been on for the past 20 years. Their catalog is a natural evolution of getting better and better at something not even their mothers could love. They will not be remembered for this journey by anyone save a microscopic slice of death metal aficionados. Why did they keep going? Why did they try so hard? What does it feel like to succeed so completely at making perfect death-grind? Likely their answer would be "The fans." I hope we damaged few are enough to keep them going for the foreseeable future. 

Best of 2023

 9) Totenmesse - Fiktionlust

I was ready to make this review about a single individual, thinking about how much I loved the vocals on Odraza's Rzeczom and seeing the same vocalist here, but to my surprise the vocalist from Odraza is actually the guitarist on this project and the vocal duties are being handled by a man named Mold. I'm not being hard on myself for not immediately noticing the difference, but this does speak to something I'm finding as a theme in Polish black metal. It's the undeniable charisma of Polish black metal vocalists, or maybe what I'm witnessing is a little microcosm of borrowed style of delivery among a small group of friends. Whatever it is I love it. The artfully syncopated rhythms, the extremity of how far the rasps are pushed, the textures between guttural bellows and shrieks. I don't know any other metal movement pushing this hard and raw on the vocals outside of maybe the veterans of grind. There's also a stark militancy present like it's in some way influenced by Poland's communist past. I've always loved when Eastern Bloc communist culture comes crashing into boundless artful expression. I'm carrying on, but Polish black metal has been on my lists for the past few years for good reason, not only for vocals, but the passion, the stretch toward something truly extreme.

Best of 2023

 10) TORPOR - Abscission

I'm in the middle of a green pasture lit by torches and moonlight. There are men on either side of me, their strong arms hooked under my shoulders. I am being dragged through a crowd of people all yelling and spitting and carrying on. A man wearing a black hood is standing on a platform 20 paces in front of me. He walks to an iron brazier, brightly lit with fire. Aggressive contours of the hooded man's face are revealed in the relief of glowing yellow reflection and shadow. With each step I try to find words in the cacophony, but I can't find the beginning or end of any syllable, it's a guttural smear of speech. Closer, closer, I'm not fighting the direction of momentum. I'm pressed against a pine wood pole, my arms pulled backward with enough force to tear the muscle in my chest. Course, splintering rope is wrapped around my wrists behind the pole and I am spread open, heart exposed to waves of flowing hatred. I am blindfolded, the noise is louder. There is heat on my heels, for a moment comforting on the briskly cool night. Then pain as the fabric against my skin is consumed by hungry flame. Moments, moments, the fire licks up my body, cooking skin, melting fat. The sound is now coming from me, louder and stronger than the mob, but it again has no words. It is simply a noise transforming my lifesblood into wet heat and air.

I feel nothing now. I have learned nothing.