While death metal was born swathed in gore (I mean, it is death metal, right?), since the mid-‘80s the genre has morphed into subgenre after sub-subgenre after sub-subgenre, resulting in…well, if we’re going to take brutal death, goregrind, and gore metal as examples…does anything truly shock and appall anymore? When’s the last time a song’s lyrics truly creeped you out? When’s the last time those lyrics joined with the music to create something utterly terrifying?
Returns DIPYGUS with its third full-length, ready to spew blood, choler and phlegm in a fountain of yellow bile ‘cross us all, ‘Perverse Termination (Bulb Of Force)’ slither-swishing, gator-like through the swamp of ooze created by somewhat-tuned guitars and skull-hammering rhythms, somehow equally as blood-drenched. After the atrocious lyrically but musically infectious chronicle of the actions of the First Liberian Civil War (‘Monrovia, LR 1990’ – complete with soundbytes of news reports), we knock back a few bottles of venom with the ‘Vipers At The Pony Keg’, which is probably not as fertile ground for festivity as the title would lead us to believe.
Angular, jagged to the point of painful string constrictions and bends cause nausea in the deep waters of ‘гига́нтский кальма́р (Ross Sea Trawler)’, to the point that one can nearly feel the tentacles, sense the beak approaching as we become sonic prey for this ocean-dwelling beast. ‘Bug Sounds II (Megascolides australis)’ is exactly what it says, continuing uninterrupted, but laid under for a time by some crazed idea of a techno beat, which only adds to the feeling of deep unease conjured by DIPYGUS at their most despicable.
‘Rat Lung-Worm’ clocks in at under two frenetic minutes but is just a primer for the 11+-minute aural torture device that is ‘Sacral Brain’, which gives the sextet ample time to test, fight against, and sometimes slice at the bounds of what most die-hard death heads would call “extreme”, resulting in something less “song” and more sonic demise in human form. Blatantly doom-drenched, blasting, yet forever cavernous, it’s hard to imagine we still have ‘The Ochopee Skunk Ape’ to survive afterwards.
Not often does a self-titled album so accurately describe the band from whence it takes its name. Ever wondered how pretty much every non-human cast member of Cannibal Holocaust felt? Ever wanted to feel that way? Fuckin’ Dipygus. Death metal lives.
Review By: Lord Randall
DIPYGUS
Dipygus
Memento Mori / Crypt Of The Wizard