Welcome to Dissident Aggression, where we sow the future, reap the present and highlight the past to bring you the underground of The Underground…
Relapse Records has always been one of the champions of death metal. Whether it was the early days of the label working with bands like Mortician, Incantation, Amorphis, and of course Suffocation or more recently with bands such as Nile, Skinless and Origin, Relapse has been a beacon for brutality. So really, when you think about it, it should come as little surprise that they’ve delivered one of the best death metal albums you’re going to hear this year.
Dallas’ Devourment have actually been around the block a few times, releasing three full length albums since their inception in 1995. However it wasn’t until they signed with a powerhouse label and started touring with some major players in the death metal scene (including Cannibal Corpse and Cattle Decapitation) that they started to go from kvlt to widely accepted as one of the best and brightest the genre has to offer right now. But it’s not just label backing or even ridiculously killer live sets that have put Devourment in the international metal consciousness. No, that distinction belongs to the fact that this band writes unrelenting and consistently brutal death metal the way it was meant to be played. There is zero remorse on this album for the listener and that’s the way it should be.
Conceived In Sewage pays homage to a lot of the great masters of the genre. The title track and “Fucked With Rats” (true story, that’s really the song name) in particular pay a great homage to Morbid Angel. Artists like the aforementioned Cannibal Corpse and Suffocation, as well as Deicide, all clearly had a role in the formation of this band’s sound. But what makes a great record great is the band’s ability to take all of their influences, make them whole and add their own twist to it. Devourment are waving the “TRUE” flag right now for returning the entire death metal genre to its earliest days when terms like “melodic” or “metalcore” didn’t exist. This album is a great place to start with that. Conceived In Sewage is an absolute steamroller of aggression plowing down everything in its path with the greatest of ease. Luckily for you guys, thanks to Relapse you can check out the entire album on the Devourment Bandcamp page.
Metal Homework:
Chicago has a brutally awesome metal scene these days. So many great bands emerging, it would seem, constantly. When you talk Chicago and Metal though the first band (or one of after Nachtmystium at least) you should be talking about is Usurper. It’s so easy to associate the US with black metal these days. But one of the pioneers of USBM was Usurper. They played black metal in the old school Bathory/Celtic Frost first wave style but even though their sound had as much to do with thrash as it did black metal their influence on the USBM scene can not be understated. I highly suggest you head over to 666 Days of Metal.com and revisit their debut full length.
