After seven years off (not counting 2005’s Zero Comfort Margin EP), one of Willowtip’s first bands returns to the fray with an absolutely sick release that shows that brutal death metal/grindcore can be way more than power chords, pig squeals and comical cover art rife with porn and zombies. The aptly named Psalm of the Grand Destroyer is a tangibly disturbing, brutal and at the same time intelligent and challenging.
Starting with Joe Horvath’s demented vocals and Scott Hull’s icky production, the album writhes and undulates with a thick, oppressive atmosphere that’s befitting black tar pits, shit covered asylum walls, and giant 50 gallon oil drums filled with dissolved human body parts. While certainly and grindcore band at their very core (predominantly very short blasting songs, quirky song titles), CoDC’s brutal death metal element has been further fleshed out, and now includes, crawling atmospherics and a lyrical theme that’s far more nerve fraying.
Titles like “When Human Compost Stains all Earth and Repels the Messengers of Love”, “We Who Move with the Graven Worms” and “Obsidian Flakes” give the already violent material an extra aura of insidious depth and malignant intellect. And the production, when used to gloss the likes of the doomy “Germinate the Reaper Seed”, just presents a nauseating, oppressive atmosphere that’s psychotic yet strangely mesmerizing.
The album’s 31-minute run time is a schizophrenic journey into callous but calculated brutality. Shifting from longer, derelict, cavernous lurches (“Avatar of Innocence”, “We Who Move with the Graven Worms”, “Ursa Major”) to typical grindcore bursts (“Chaos Crawls Back”, “Last Words and Warning Signs”, “Jaracaca”) and the downright creepy (“Earth and Lye”, “Obsidian Flakes”), and everything in between, the album is steeped in nasty hues and tones that could well be the sound track to Jeffrey Dahmer’s nightmares.
This is exactly the kind of superb brutal death metal/grindcore album that made Cephalic Carnage’s Misled By Certainty such a let down. It’s brutal, yet challenging and ultimately sticks with you with a vile sense of cohesion and ambience.
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Cool review, not the biggest fan of the genre but I’m gonna check this out..
on Sep 28th, 2010 at 08:15Troof – but I don’t think they’ll ever top Human Harvest. The vocals on that album still blow my mind.
on Sep 29th, 2010 at 03:22I think Misled By Certainty was WAAAAAAAY better than this album, to be honest…but then again, I’ve never been too big a fan of Circle of Dead Children. Oh well, to each his own; great review anyway!
on Oct 2nd, 2010 at 20:24Great review. Great band of cool dudes with the sincerity that seems to have been lost in so many newer bands over the years. I’m still partial to The Genocide Machine, maybe just for its time I don’t know, but this new album reminds me of Exotic Sense Decay, The Genocide Machine and Human Harvest all rolled up in one.
on Oct 6th, 2010 at 16:48Always enjoyed everything this band has done, this is no different. And I as well was disappointed with cephalic Carnage. I haven’t cared much for them since Lucid Interval. But really comparing the two isn’t really fair (meaning CC &CODC)
on Oct 10th, 2010 at 13:37