Vitriol : "Suffer and Become"

 

This Portland band has been getting a great deal of buzz. My main complaint regarding death metal is it all too often relies on sheer aggression without doing anything to set itself apart from all the other death metal bands relying on sheer aggression. The opening track starts with an eerie guitar rather than going head first into blasting at you. Granted these guys do blast at you, but there are at least early signs that they are willing to try something different. They thrash further into the bound of hyper-aggression on "the Flowers of Sadism". They are dark and dense, with a touch of Morbid Angel in their attack, I am impressed but by the next song will be asking what else they can do. 

If their answer is "Nursing From the Mother Wound" then the answer is really just what you hear is what you get. It is no fucks given full blast beat ahead. I appreciate the enthusiasm. The only problem is I have a ton of bands that already sound like this. Goatwhore does this better with hookier songs. Three songs in it might be premature for this judgment, but they have seven more songs to prove me wrong. They slow down to a more deliberate throb going into "the Isolating the Lie of Learning Another", but it's a struggle for them not to default back to the speed-induced rage. Things begin to work off a formula that is fatal to the flesh here. 

The most interesting moment so far is when they shed the distortion on "Survival's Careening Inertia". This creative streak is quickly dissipated by the explosive burst that is "Weaponized Loss". It is rapid-fire and very volatile, but as far as songwriting goes it is more of a primal expression.  "Flood of Prediction" sounds like an extension of the previous song. The song that follows "Locked in thine frothing Wisdom" might as well be the same song they started back on "Weaponized Loss" as it has been the same continuous barrage with nothing in the way of dynamics to separate it.   It is not until "I am Every Enemy" that the riff sets itself as a song unto itself. Then the last song returns to the blur of gnashing teeth snapping at guitar strings. I will give this album a 7, they have potential, I wish they had taken a deeper look at who they are as humans and touched on the darker more nuanced side of the pain expressed here. 

pst12