Category Archives: USA

ECTOVOID (USA): “Breathing Blackness” tape 2011 Unholy Domain

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I was supposed to review these releases from the great label Unholy Domain, generous sly offered as promos by the label, a long ago. Better late than never, they say, after all.

I don’t know if it’s my tape deck that it’s getting decrepit and possibly oxidized in several components, but the sound on this tape is rather bass-heavy and confused. Which might fit, being a demo (or better, a repress of a demo originally on CD-r), but I definitely need to give it a try on a different set one day.

The tracks on this cassette are quite old and represent a rather immature version of the band, who in my opinion will give their best in their debut album on Hellthrasher the following year. I haven’t really followed their releases but it seems to me that the second album is a bit underwhelming. Here, as well as in the debut, the sounds are more similar to that of a certain Swedish Death Metal a la early Therion, but it is the vocals on this demo that will really give the best in the 2012 album.

Nothing particularly exciting, but worth a listen.

Pneuma Hagion “Trinity I” tape, 2015

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Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Pneuma Hagion “Trinity I” tape, deep slow & low tuned Death Metal from Texas, 2015 Nuclear War Now!

Small one man project of Ryan Wilson from Intestinal Disgorge, a band whose lows are way less than the highs, but that here pulls out a decent nice release. With Pneuma Hagion Ryan tries the slow chunky Death Metal way with deep Pillardesque vocals, so much so this tape reminds a non-esoteric or non-evil version Onward to Golgotha. I generally struggle to like one man bands, but Ryan sounds inspired here and albeit there is not much difference between the songs (they basically all sound the same) the formula of having low tuned tremolos with slow grinding bridges and ultra deep grunts is nice so I would give it a distracted 6. Not stuff I’d really spend my cash for a vinyl as it was recently repressed on wax by NWN together with another three EPs, but I have heard much worse.

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Satanik Goat Ritual/Vomit Angel “Cacodemon” split 7″, Blasphemous Arts (2019)

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Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Satanik Goat Ritual/Vomit Angel “Cacodemon” split 7″, breathless demonic Black Metal vs ugly and metallic Grindcore, Blasphemous Arts (2019)

What do you get when you assemble rotting shit expelled from Morbosidad and Sadogoat/Sadomator? A hell of a good 7″ I can guarantee with a certificate of sickness.
The care taken to release this vinyl is vibrant, it comes with a poster and insert other than a black innersleeve, and the cover itself is a piece of art by none other than Paolo Girardi this time in b/w, I personally love the fact that the art has some reminiscence of old 70’s horror comics and the layout is genuinely simple. The only thing I don’t like is the color on the logos, they could have gone entirely black and white and the final result would have been twice as good, two colors is way too much for the music of Satanas.

Other than that, Satanik Goat Ritual is a monstrously sick creation of grinding southern blasphemy, they have the choking, hyper-saturated sound that locks you in one-inch face to face eye contact with the demons of the Abyss. They have such a suffocating sound that when you turn to Vomit Angel they get a little displaced. I have the whole discography of Sadogoat since day one, but never managed to hear this band before, they sound like a more punkish incarnation but with rotting influences of early grindcore like Gut or Gonkulator, and that vaguely garage atmosphere of late ’80s protodeath metal bands (think of the earlier Nihilist) I am not entirely sold to be honest, they’re certainly raw and I appreciate the uncontrolled attitude but there is some extra alcoholic fun I prefer not to have in my tea.
All in all the idea of combining the bands was excellent anyway.

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Incubus “Incubus” 7″, 1987-1989

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Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Incubus “Incubus” 7″, THE Death Metal, Gore (1987-1989)

There is basically no excuse not to own this record if one listens to Death Metal, as it captures the true Death Metal essence in its most untainted form. Because, yes, Death Metal is something way more than gore lyrics and blasts, something that I believe many people are missing today, especially coming from other genres. It’s the vibrant energy of blood and transition, of pain and trespassing, of loss and blissful abandonment. Recorded back in 1987 and re-released on a legendary German label that also released a bunch of other huge classic vinyls like Asphyx, Disastrous Murmur and Macabre, this EP contains all of this and more. Think of the schizophrenic vocals and drumming of Nuclear Death transferred into Morbid Angel’s demos and you get an idea of the necromantic leather and spikes savagery of this immense recording. You get all the intricate distant riffing, delirious solos, crazy vocals, all the three-dimensional textures of sweat, spikes, and black leather that this music used to stand for. I still rate it one inch from Morbid Angel or Necrovore, but these guys were playing in the same game and they definitely got to the finals.

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Morbid Gods “Rotting Prophecies” 7″, Temple Of Abomination 2011

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Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Morbid Gods “Rotting Prophecies” 7″, insubstantial Death Doom from US, Temple Of Abomination 2011

Punk crusties turned to OSDM sometimes score great bands like Black Blood Invocation and sometimes they just shoot in the flock to catch some easy prey with debatable results. I still have no idea why Blood Harvest created this sub label for just a handful of releases as I can’t exactly catch what’s the conceptual difference between the two entities but nevertheless this 7″ has been released on this small imprint called Temple Of Abomination. I picked up this 7″ totally convinced it was some repress of old Altar (swe) stuff (check the logo!) until I was already handing money for it at the record stand. I told myself hey, the logo is cool the art is cool, the worst that could happen would have been just another regular doomy Death Metal item to add to the EP crates in the Crypt of Rot. And so it turned out to be – generic songs with 3 tempo changes of routine death doom that could actually have been recorded in 1991. It sounds like a mix of demo era Profanatica and Incantation BUT played by someone who listened to the songs just once. I am not complaining too much as there is nothing wrong besides being totally soulless and without any quality of note, I personally like the idea of a recording being minimalistic and unpretentious yet there is really very little meat to chew here.

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Killing Addiction “When Death Becomes An Art” 7″, Inverse Dogma 2015

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Oggi il Dottor Marciume ascolta: Killing Addiction “When Death Becomes An Art” 7″, generic technical Death Metal from US, Inverse Dogma 2015

I have no idea why I keep giving this band a chance, obviously, the best stuff they released was the Necroshine 7″ on Seraphic Decay and well I have a fetish for that label, but I think the shitty raspy production gave a kick to a band that composition-wise just doesn’t have “it”. The CD they had on JL America was already highly generic uptempo meh techie Death/Thrash with boring, dangerous kind of boring I mean, you can’t really listen to that while driving, influences. And yet I still have my copy of that too, you know, amazing Nick Curry cover you can’t miss that. Arguably the return of the band meant better production that probably suits even better their sound. This 7″ was released on a little label from Italy and I think they did a decent job, indeed the recording is crisp and probably these riffs are way better than the ones on the album, but I cannot stand all that mid-tempo chugs and vocals that just follow every single twist. They added some melody in the twist as well, shifting inexorably the band towards a sunny corner of this genre I am not interested in.

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