Death is June - Obscene : "Agony & Wounds"

 

This is the third album from this band based out of Indiana. They play a hyper-fast, mega-aggressive style of death metal that sounds like if Obituary smoked a bunch of meth and twitched out during a Carcass tribute. It's heading in the grindcore direction, but are more committed to their riffs. The vocals have that howling quality to them that John Tardy made famous but with less desire to utter the lyrics in a decipherable fashion. I do appreciate its intensity and was impressed by the first song. It is the effect that many ultra-heavy bands have when you first hear them they hit you with so much violence that you are stunned at what you just heard and your ears are still ringing for the second song, so it takes a minute before you come to your senses ask if they can actually write a song. 

Going into "Noxious Expulsion" it sounds like they might be willing to give songwriting a shot and then speed to an ungodly speed that casts the notion aside. Amazingly, this guy Kyle Shaw is attempting to make a career out of this style of vocalizing. It is more like vocal texturing than what we commonly think of death metal vocalists doing, which is largely thought of as something closer to Cookie Monster. "Death's Denial" at least has a riff that is easier to bon your head to. The vocals begin to make all the songs sound the same halfway into the album. Making a part of the sound that sets them apart, and what annoys me regarding them. "The Reaper's Blessing " has a more deliberate riff, making it also more Morbid Angel-like. They continue down this more deliberate path going into "Rotting Behind the Madness". I like the nihilistic message behind the songs, though the lyrics are obscured in Shaw's delivery. 

There are more attempts at songwriting executed in "Dressed in Corpses". But once again the vocals howl with the same harsh cadence they have spewed at with little variation throughout the album thus far. "Oceans of Rot" is the third song with rotting or decay as the theme. The riffs feel a little more refined here, but once again the relentless scowling of the vocals makes it all blend together. The mournful title track that closes the album, is an example of what they should have been doing all along sonically. The slower pace makes him vary the way he growls, even it the shift in pitch is almost non-existent, the cadence is different. I will give this album a 7, musically it is pretty solid, my complaints are with the vocals maybe they are more your thing than mine. This album drops July 12th on Nameless Grave. 

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