Mickey's Metal Morsels: Episode Thirty Eight

Well, as Metal May nears it’s end for another year I really had to give over MMM to the heaviest metal I could find, right? Enjoy and remember – BANG THAT HEAD THAT DOES NOT BANG!

DISSONANT SEEPAGE

They cower in the presence of a different kind of divinity; a malformed mutation, a bastard construct of infinite decay stitched together with threads of malfeasance and malevolence. Old, empty eyes survey a gathered cankerous congregation of supplicants and the irresistible power of putrescence radiates from a towering frame of mouldering musculature and impossible madness. This is the deity of all our futures, the cancerous king of decomposition, the tainted lord of corruption and the sour embrace at the end of our path.

New York’s Dissonant Seepage have been roused from their slumber in a morass of low frequencies and dark dreams and emerged with a second full length album sculpted from coagulating blood and rotten teeth. Following in the footsteps of 2023’s The Darkness Will Swallow You Whole, it is time to welcome the sensory distress of Dystopian Putrescence! Opening track and first single Ancient Pestilence Reborn casts ceremony to the flames and immediately immerses you in a festering, screaming slough of utter brutality, an invocation of unspeakable horrors. There is no relief from the seething, suffocating darkness as punishing drum work is unleashed beneath wretched sounds from the deep places of the Earth. The riffs of Immortal Until Decay tear through your intestines like an invasive worm, while Rotting Monument twists your perceptions like being trapped in a fever dream. Each new cascade of horror strengthens the curated atmosphere, building a world of chaos held together by rotting sinew – a nightmare vision! The final trilogy of tracks seem to gradually build in intensity and ferocity, with the concluding title track, Dystopian Putrescence being a monstrous inferno of blasting, squirming, writhing, raging sickness. It’s a finale that makes sure the wounds inflicted will scar and the resulting infection runs deep.

Now an established part of Comatose Music’s abhorrent armies, Dissonant Seepage will unleash Dystopian Putrescence through the world’s premiere purveyors of pestilence on June sixth. Recorded, mixed and mastered at Atrium Audio (August Burns Red, Rivers Of Nihil, Black Crown Initiate et cetera) to capture the sound of dissolving worlds and putrefaction on an unimaginable scale and bedecked in the unhallowed artwork of Pär Olofsson (Exodus, Immolation, Unleashed), Dystopian Putrescence is a mind warping, panic inducing and utterly unforgettable experience.

DEATHGOAT

Beneath a skull-faced moon on a night when old and young alike shake and sweat beneath their sheets as the reaper travels through their dreams, when the mausoleum gates fall broken to the ground and the ways to Tartarus stand open…then the dead arise to hunt. From beneath the flames and through the graveyard dirt their mouldering corpses rise, tattered sinew and fragmenting bones infused with strength and spirit for one night of vengeful freedom. One night of spite and violence, one night of lust and hunger; one night to tear down the living and drag them into realms below!

Four years on from their Regurgitated Into Existence debut, Finnish death metal fiends Deathgoat have returned for your bodies and your souls! Dragged Into Realms Below is their new nine track album of funeral rites and undead rebirth, absolute death metal in every twitching limb and empty eye socket. Beginning with the haunting notes of intro Alkulima, part lament, part invocation and all evil, Dragged Into Realms Below is a rampaging beast spawned from the rotten womb of early Scandinavian death. Savage tracks like Congregation Of Disease are rife with riffs infused with horror and arcane ritual, devilish and dark. From the absolute inferno of Dying To Be Dead to the malignant majesty of the album’s concluding, title track, via the glorious atmospheric lead work of Compulsive Cannibalism, Dragged Into Realms Below is everything a death metal album should be. Complete with a feral, snarling guitar tone, drums like hammers on coffin lids and a voice that speaks from the abyssal pits of the underworld, no death metal addict will be able to resist the lure of this gut wrenching poison.

Adorned in the masterful artwork of Bram Bruyneel (Officium Triste, Hideous Divinity et cetera) Dragged Into Realms Below will be unleashed upon the world on June tenth by Xtreem Music, who are fast becoming a byword for brilliance when it comes to supreme old school death metal! When this out of control hearse comes careering out of the night this summer, be prepared for total annihilation!

HAEMORRHAGE

Spain’s Haemorrhage should require no introduction. Alongside Mortician, there is no other gore-obsessed death metal band who’ve been around longer and been more influential – or, perhaps most importantly, never wimped out for more commercial aspirations. As such, while they’ve undoubtedly drawn influence from the immortal early works of Carcass, it could be argued that Haemorrhage have in many ways bested the original. Or, simply, rarely does goregrind get as disgusting and catchy as it does from these Spanish legends.

Alas, it’s been eight long years since Haemorrhage released the full-length We are the Gore, and the only brand-new material they’ve released since then was the three-way split with Hemdale and Meat Spreader the following year. Therefore, it is with no small amount of ceremony that Opera Medica arrives, courtesy of longtime fans Hells Headbangers (who recently reissued on vinyl 1998’s classic Anatomical Inferno). Thankfully, Haemorrhage are as sick and depraved as ever, serving up their characteristic goregrind with utmost catchiness, crushing power, and a charisma otherwise elusive to their contemporaries. Featuring five exclusive songs in nineteen swift minutes, Opera Medica sounds exactly as it should – like Haemorrhage, sewer-drenched and slicing / sluicing and yet with a focus that’s (STILL!) frightening to behold – but the uniquely strutting Nomenclator Pathologicum surprises with its sleazy groove, and is bound to become one of the band’s new live standards.

Haemorrhage’s Opera Medica will be exclusively available on CD and one-sided 12” vinyl, with a silkscreened side B. Don’t be a canoe and miss out on this new record by one of the few nineties death metal bands that hasn’t wimped out!

UNMERCIFUL

Unmerciful’s new album marks a new era of relentless violence and sonic brutality! With ten tracks of scorching intensity and distorted vengeance, Devouring Darkness is filled with blistering blast beats, intricate kick drum patterns, and destructive riffing.

Unmerciful has announced the first of many live assaults in support of Devouring Darkness. The band will host an album release show on June 20 at Warehouse on Broadway in Kansas City, MO, alongside Torn The Fuck Apart, Garoted, and Hossferatu.

Devouring Darkness sees the return of longtime member Jeremy Turner to guitar and introduces Josh Riley as the band’s new vocalist, further intensifying the group’s punishing sound.

The album was engineered and produced by Clinton Appelhanz at Waveworks Studio, with mastering handled by the legendary Alan Douches (Cannibal Corpse, Hate Eternal, et cetera.), with artwork by Santiago Francisco Jaramillo.

As an aside, the band is seeking a bassist for live performances and/or a permanent position. Serious inquiries only. Contact the band for details.