Excellent!!!! I say out loud to myself as a twiddle my fingers with euphoric glee! YES! YES! YES! New Zealand’s Organectomy make their presence felt numerous times over with their first full length album Domain of the Wretched.  Organectomy are more than a standard, run of the mill slam band.  I would consider more a technical brutal death grind band than anything else.  The two bands that came to mind upon first listen was Disgorge and Putridity.  It is one thing to have slam riffs.  It’s another to have a plethora of tempo changes. Mixing slam riffs with tempo changes and movie samples is nothing new in brutal death metal, however the way these New Zealanders do it has quite the flair.   Alright then let’s get more in to the meat and potatoes of this release.

Opening with “Eons of Unyielding Darkness” Domain of the Wretched opens up with an eerie clean tone instrumental that has some other chaotic ambience going on in the background before finally fading in and proceeding to pummel everything in sight with top notch rhythms by the string section and excellent percussive accompaniment by drummer Jae Hulburt. There are times during Domain of the Wretched where I scratch my head and wonder if a group like Ulcerate had influence on these youngsters. For a first self-release full length this has all of the polish and shine of a veteran band releasing a third or fourth album. These guys probably weren’t that much of a twist to the arms of the Unique Leaders of Unique Leader. There is not much here to not like.  Other tracks like, “Intracranial Incubation” make me smile.  Got to love well placed movie samples on a brutal death grind album.  This particular track features a quite recognizable part from a late 1990’s Paul Verhoeven film.  You don’t need to be a bug squashed to figure it out.  Well placed and fits within the lyrical context of track.

I must say that having two instrumentals on this album is a bit refreshing.  The first one “Archaic Infestation” clocks in a little over five minutes and opens up with dissonant riffing building into an almost like Robert Vigna of Immolation styled note bends into a heavier chunk riff underneath. Super Catchy. The second a little bit later in the album, “Cascading into Despair” clocks in at over seven minutes. This particular instrumental continues to add to the overall variety of the album with nylon stringed guitars opening things up and then building into the distorted section. The title track “Domain of the Wretched” starts off with intense blasting and chaos before throwing the hammer down with some brutal circle pit slam riffing.   I think its slick that they put the first one a third into the album and the second two thirds into the album.  Having these tracks were they do does a great job of breaking things up.

Having been together since 2010, Organectomy have put a great deal of meticulous work getting to the release of this album. This eleven track, forty five minute plus debut is a monstrously intense and diverse slab of west coast style death metal with tinges of dissonance at times.  Domain of the Wretched is a nice break in variety from the plethora of other Unique Leader releases so far this year.  Definitely not melodic and thrashy.  Definitely not deathcore.  Definitely mean brutal tech death grind. This style can be a bit difficult to hold my attention span but these guys break each track up with enough variety that it makes the album quite enjoyable to listen to the whole way through. Check it out.

 

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