I reviewed South Africa’s brutal death metal/deathcore band Vulvodynia’s Praenuntius Infiniti album three years ago and was super impressed with the album, seeing I had been a recent fan of theirs and that was their best album up to that point.

The signing to Unique Leader Records propelled the band as well and put the band in front of everyone’s eyes, especially with all the indiemerch drops for that album.  The band was able to come to the United States to tour and the band blew up big time for their bludgeoning live performances.  I really enjoyed the band combining brutal death metal, alongside their deathcore leanings.

Last year the band parted ways with long-time vocalist Duncan Bentley, as it came to light he was a pretty violent dude, so the band and fans claimed.  The dude did have quite a set of impressive pipes.  Guitarist, Lwandile Prusent, took over the vocals last year and this fifth album Entabeni, sees his debut vocal work.  So how does he and the rest of the band sound on this new album? Read on my fellow metalhead to find out.

“Imbawula” opens the album and is a one-minute instrumental to get things pumping and it goes along quite nicely to the next song “Devil Tree”.  Prusent’s vocals are definitely influenced by Bentley’s vocals, but his screechy high pitched tones do grate on my nerves quite a bit. His lower register gutturals are very good, indeed, however I do prefer their prior vocalist’s tones.  The drum sound at the 2.40 section has a djent style to it, something they started to experiment with on the last album.  This sound actually sounds quite a bit like “Bleed”, from Meshuggah.  This moment is heavy AF with plenty of tempo shifts and the signature bass plucking guitar and the guitar tone is cleaned up a bit more this time around.  Very good song.

“The Rand Lord” is up next beginning with a monstrous groove that is super heavy, before the blasting comes into the picture.  The song gets into a mid-paced groove which I can see a live crowd bee-bopping up and down.  The faster moment comes in afterwards.  There are some very interesting guitar solos at the end of the song, showing the band having a melodic sound and this part works rather well.  The song is another good song…still not grabbing my attention, as much as I want though.

“Mamlambo” starts things off with a nice groove and sharp pinch harmonics all over the place.  This opening and mid-paced moment is excellent.  The faster blasting erupts then back into the groove.  One thing Vulvodynia does so well is their tempo shifts and also unafraid to return to a catchy riff.  This is precisely what they do after the blasting, right back into that catchy pinch harmonic part.  Some more melodic guitar harmonies towards the ends which are all intertwined with the bludgeoning brutality.  This is an ass-kicking song from start to finish. The title track is a slower bludgeoning number and at times the speed erupts with some wild guitar solos.  This is more of a tank-driven heavy bruising number which is also excellent.  I definitely feel the second half of the album is more memorable than the first half.

Entabeni is a really good Vulvodynia album.  The band continues with their deathcore leanings quite a lot, but also adding more melody which is very cool to hear, especially since the band are a pretty brutal band.  The talent is definitely there with this band.  I prefer their previous album, because from start to finish each song was memorable and catchy.  This album does not have as many of those parts, with some of the songs kinda just whizzing by without staying power.  Overall I do enjoy this, just wanted to like it a bit more.

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