If cover art alone were to be the sole emphasis for what goes on a metalhead’s shopping list, Malsanctum’s Metamorbid Fetishization, will absolutely sell out in a matter of minutes. Holy cow! I swear that’s someone’s hair is being used to wipe someone’s foot clean. Blasphemous ululations! That just hit the jackpot right there. On the serious side, Iron Bonehead Productions wasn’t just sold on the cover art before re-pressing this cassette release. The music is quite necro, but has distinct quality and originality. Blackened doom is a hybrid not altogether popular with many, but this is still better than Skitliv. It sounds like Loss jamming with Atriarch. Most of it is slow and fetid, and the drums are absolutely ritual-like. More on that later.
Feedback introduces us to Malsanctum’s world. Then, there’s the slow jam. The riffs are wicked sick and the necro production does the trick. Sure, once in a while, clearer production lends the listener a better experience of making out all the instrumentation, but in Malsanctum’s case, the production fits the album just fine. There are recorded explosions and strangled leads, all while the vocalist unearths the deepest bellowing gurgle I’ve ever heard. Michael Akerfeldt used to be my growl hero. Malsanctum just took that distinction away from him, just by sounding like a thousand slaughtered cows coming back from sports grill heaven.
The music picks up the pace after some cvlt doom jamming, but not by much. Then, it’s a rollercoaster ride back to the graveyard, as the music pulls you down into a six-foot-deep puddle of wormy viscera.
Doom fans will love this. Metamorbid Fetishization is an odd name. Just imagine if there were a concept. The music sounds absolutely demented. Like Silence of the Lambs serial killer Buffalo Bill was playing this in his basement lair after another kill.
What will surprise you is the Arabic riff in the middle of the song. Now, I’m not sure if that influence did play into it being on the album, but it sure sounds like it to me. Figuratively, Babylon just rose out of the drain in my tub and languished me with all its temptations. After that brief melee, though, is more doom grandeur. The drums sound ancient, by the way. Every hit sounds like a floor tom hit with a baseball bat.
Okay, this is important. Lock the kids away, and don’t let them listen to this shit until they understand that the world isn’t ending in your living room right there while you’re playing this album. Perfect soundtrack, you ask? Try a cleaning company using a vacuum strong enough to suck your manager’s soul in. Try a geothermal plant tapping into an active volcano for power production. Try Satan after he gets pissed that you ended up somewhere in heaven.
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