The 25 Best Brutal Death Metal Albums of the Last 10 Years
Actually my favorites, but I wanted the sensational headline clicks
We're in the midst of a brutal death metal renaissance. It's a golden era of goo, a resurgence of sickness. Naturally, I, a debased prospector perversely interested in mining bilious bands with the parentage of toilets and tractors, spend an inordinate and frankly indefensible amount of time listening to and thinking about this stuff. And so, I thought to myself, what better way to torch my future cred, career prospects, and relationships than to write about it at length under a pretty flimsy pen name that everyone already knows is me?1 Thus, you get this list of BDM albums I like a lot released over the past 10 years.
What did the research for this list consist of, you ask? Oh, not much. Just a playlist of over 1,000 tracks that totaled about 50 hours worth of music. I listened to all of it. It has completely broken my brain, spirit, and body. So, in every sense of the phrase, this is list of brutal death metal and nothing more because I truly can't comprehend anything anymore. BUT...
There's no "nothing more" in this brave new world. Everything is subject to debate. So, in the tradition of anything published during the reign of the Listicle Industrial Complex, I need to deliver some caveats and stipulations up front to cull the herd of inevitable complaints.
I don't care.
I'm only interested in listing the more degenerate versions of BDM.
That means stuff like, uh, Arsebreed and the other precise tech technicians don't really fit the bill. Arsebreed? Arsebreed. I guess I could've picked a better smarty pants, not-degenerate example.
I'm not listing anything that's, like, NG+ death metal. Deliquesce is a great example. Love it. Cursed with Malevolence is a killer record. But it's a death metal album to me, not a brutal death metal album; more Disincarnate than Dispersed. What's eligible for this list has to sound like it was born from the same primordial puddle that pooled underneath a rancid radiator in a Long Island basement.
As much as it pains me to do this, no extremely hard bop, either. Anything in the I Can't Believe It's Not Encenathrakh sphere is a little too outre. (Will I keep this promise? Foreshadowing: Probably not!)
Basically, if it doesn't have gurgles and/or riffs that sound like a Maximum Overdrive'd woodchipper running rampant in an overstaffed aluminum siding factory, I don't care.
I think this goes without saying, but this list only features full-lengths. Ecchymosis's Psychopathic Concupiscence Towards Homicidal Lacerations is the best thing that band has released and one of the BDM highlights of 2022, but it is an EP.
Rules are meant to be broken.
I'm not including any album released in 2024. Yes, it has been an OK year for BDM thus far. A tasting pour:
Brodequin - Harbinger of Woe
Defeated Sanity - Chronicles of Lunacy
Despondency - Matriphagy
Indecent Excision - Into the Absurd
Malignancy - ...Discontinued
Submerged - Tortured at the Depths
Viscera Infest - Teratoma
Wormed - OMEGON
More is on the way, probably. Anyway, the sweet smell of recency bias hasn't yet rubbed off on any of those releases. It wouldn't be fair to those records, or me, when I have to re-read this list in a year if some Johnny come lately cites a then-newbie as evidence of my idiocy. So, yeah, maybe next year for the bangers listed above.
I don't care.
Finally, since this newsletter will go out to a bunch of well-adjusted people who don't like BDM, I've once again called on Metal Clippy to act as an audience surrogate for normal people.
Hi, Metal Clippy.
Hey there, buddy!
Long time, thankfully. I see I've decided to give you a half-assed mouth this time.
You sure did!
That's unfortunate.
Thanks!
Your job is to tell normal people if they can withstand the supreme punishment of these BDM albums, and, if you're feeling up to it, suggesting some use cases.
Okey dokey!
You are the dumbest thing I've created for this legitimately stupid newsletter.
Thanks!
OK. Let's list.
25. Urosepsis - Malicious Malpractice (2019)
From: Austin, TX
Label: Sevared Records
One of the most quintessential qualities of a brutal death metal band is riffs. This seems self-evident: metal bands should riff — apologies if that offends the entirety of the symphonic/goth styles that wouldn't know a riff even if it was priced to move in Hot Topic. But it's surprising how many acts in even the deathly arts forget to craft memorable ones, choosing to prioritize brutal bluster instead. These riff-deaf dolts flip on the jet engine and hope the cacophony covers for the fact there are zero earworms wiggling below the roar.
Urosepsis, the solo-ish project of Shane Elwell, who has been in more bands than heroin and is probably best known now for raw d-beat meme grinders Noisy Neighbors, brought the riffs on its full-length debut, Malicious Malpractice. It's a bountiful harvest from the riff fields. There are chugs. There are grooves. There are those stuttering blasts that hearken back to the room-shaking, seismic onslaughts of the old masters. Like, if you're not swooning after that first Suffocation bludgeoner in "Epidermodysplasia Verruciformis," you'll want to tap out and skip the rest of this list. But Urosepsis doesn't just have riffs. No, Malicious Malpractice possesses another critical component of BDM badassery: a killer rhythm section. Maybe these riffs would hit hard without Mithridatum's Lyle Cooper commanding the skins, but I doubt they'd hit this hard. Cooper plays this stuff like he's auditioning for Angelcorpse, blasting past the struggle drummers endemic in the genre. The title of the closer says it all, really: "Incisions of Precision." The duo lives by that maxim. Oh, and this one, too: Riffs really are a way of life.
Wow. Jumping right into the deep end! Well, I…uh…think this might be a great study buddy for people in medical terminology classes! It is…very loud, though.
24. Baalsebub - The Sickness of the Holy Inquisition (2016)
From: Tallinn, Estonia
Label: Ungodly Ruins Productions
There's a whole subsection of BDM that subsists solely on the enduring idea of What Would Brodequin Do? Even Unmatched Brutality, the label run by Brodequin guitarist Mike Bailey, pretty much adheres to that party line. It's a hard formula to fuck up. Play fast, then play faster, then slow it way down, and then play faster. There's a reason Brodequin is one of the most dominant templates in the form next to Suffocation, Malignancy, and Disgorge. (I hear you, but most bands following the Devourment path are, in fact, butt.)
Baalsebub's full-length debut, The Sickness of the Holy Inquisition, is housed in the same decrepit dungeon as Brodequin's Methods of Execution, albeit a far pingier variant than its forebear. It, too, additionally fills the room with a dank, fetid depravity that makes its churning chugs sound all the more moist. Still, it's hard not to align the hallmarks of the student and the teacher: The Sickness of the Holy Inquisition is raw, unforgiving, and mucks around in the mire of intense misanthropy. The Inquisition is such a fertile period of history for death metal because, in the words of Bruce Dickinson, the evil that men do lives on and on. It's an oft-mined but still disturbing part of the human condition: It's never enough to simply vanquish one's foes but to maximize their suffering. Thus, you get a Baalsebub song like "Torment of the Slow Rectal Impalement," a title that could have a, uh, myriad of connotations if pulled out of context. (Was it not Shakespeare who let themes of sex and death subtly commingle, I write, trying to inject some semblance of intelligence into a list I know friends with graduate degrees will try to read before blocking my number.) Still, although dealing in the details of cruel torture, Baalsebub is never torturous, letting the sickos feast on particularly virulent slams. While Famine, the Estonian's full-length follow-up, is the better album, favoring a heavier approach, The Sickness of the Holy Inquisition has so much character, taking the limiter off its bloodlust. Sometimes, the joy of BDM is the ecstatic fervor of a band going for it even if that ultimately exceeds its skills.
Uh…huh. Are all the albums going to be like this? OK, back to work! If you have strong opinions about the Geneva Conventions, I might give this one a pass!
23. Metharoma - Pipe Dreams (Through the Alley) (2021)
From: Germany / USA
Label: New Standard Elite
I'd like to introduce to the list the first entry from New Standard Elite, the label that has done more to shape BDM over the last 15 years than any other entity. To drive its importance home, its offerings make up 48 percent of what you're reading right now. All hail that stupid eagle and the re-enactment-ass drum and fife video intros.
Like a lot of releases in a subgenre with an intentionally tiny fanbase, Metharoma's debut, Pipe Dreams (Through the Alley), which, sadly, is not a meth-induced companion to Robert Palmer's "Sneakin' Sally Thru the Alley," came and went when it was released, noted for being the other band of longtime Defeated Sanity bassist Jacob Schmidt and not much more. But the international team-up has only grown in stature over the last three years because, well, it's real good. The quartet makes up for its comparative lack of batshittery thanks to its execution, blasting forcefully with a 'we know how to play out instruments' precision. Basically, they split a Riffland-based time share with Urosepsis. But Metharoma makes its name with those stronger-than-all chugs. It's like the band smoked PCP laced with HGH and decided it was the rightful inheritor of the Internal Bleeding throne. It's pumped-up gym music. If you don't start strutting around like you've won an MMA match by decisive knockout during the teeth-rattling, absolute-unit chugdown on "Spray and Pray," especially when singer Ben Kitchen sweetens the churn with a heavily echoed "fuck," we clearly want different things from life. I wouldn't, like, listen to this on a first date. But if I were kidnapped at a dockside bar and impressed into servitude as a Bloodsport combatant, I'd ask for Pipe Dreams (Through the Alley) as my final meal. Also, probably a bunch of meth, too. Really get into that tear-some-faces-off state of mind. Jean-Claude Van A Couple Grams, am I right?2
Crystal meth is very dangerous to your health! If you're familiar with the aroma of meth, this might not be a list of music but an intervention! We love you and care about you!
22. Disavowed - Revocation of the Fallen (2020)
From: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Label: Brutal Mind
I'm sure there were plenty of warning — and considering I don't pay much mind to the incessant natterings of most PR blasts because I am bad at my job3, I'm sure that was the case — but it felt like Disavowed and Arsebreed, its more tech-inclined sibling, suddenly dug themselves out of the grave with great comebacks in 2020. In my mind, Revocation of the Fallen was the better of the two, featuring a more old-school commitment to instrumental carnage that was also blessed with a hear-every-note clarity. The virtuosic abilities of these all-stars are half the battle, consistently wowing with the supreme-technician-plus-insatiable-bloodthirst of Michael Jordan about to lose a bet. Drummer Septimiu Hărşan's skin slapping alone is worth focusing on for a few spins. (Hărşan is now also in Mass Infection, one of the better Morbid Angelers on the planet. I am excited for that.) That means there's much to dig into on Revocation of the Fallen, including the lyrics that buck the trend of moist malevolence and poo spray for philosophical exploration. (Musically and lyrically, it's like a far less repugnant Brutus in that respect.) Still, this all about those riffs. Four years on, I'm still uncovering badass glittering jewels of intense riffment, be it the Cannibal Corpse-y speedathons or early Anata-esque entwined guitar stuff that's like barbed wire wrapped around a baseball bat. Disavowed is also the most "normal" act on this list, so if you want an inroads, here it is. But, I have to stress this inroads is like the sheer cliff scene in William Friedkin's Sorcerer. You gonna get blown up.
Anyway, I'd be remiss if I didn't give a shout to Indonesia's Brutal Mind, the only label I can think of that makes you pay extra dinero for a jewel case.
You say this is the "most normal" record on the list, but it still sounds like someone speed-dialing an infinite long distance to reach Hell. Are there any bands in here that sound like, I don't know, The Black Album?
21. Putrescent Seepage - Dead and Demented (2020)
From: Adelaide, Australia
Label: New Standard Elite
You're now entering the gloop zone. Back when this Aussie grand gross-out gutter-dweller was a duo, it luxuriated in the murk. On first listen, the only thing surfacing from the slime are some super creative pinch harmonics. But the more you listen to it, the more you're able to mop up the gore. Dead and Demented has a surprising verticality. Yes, the riffs sound like a mutant, eight-legged Chernobyl deer trying not to get Frogger'd on the freeway. Yes, the clattering drums that might as well be someone tossing an entire drumline into a trash compactor (RIP Nick Cannon, leaving behind half the planet's population). But there are layers, honest to god layers, provided you want to hear a layered BDM experience whilst bobbing around in the gloop zone. So, fear not lover's of stuff that has the shape of actual music. That said, I think it's better to let Putrescent Seepage wash over you like a tsunami of offal. And yeah, that band name fits: The dual vocal attack is the guttural embodiment of the upstairs neighbor's toilet clogging and dripping sewage on your bed. Yes, this is currently happening in my domicile. I've called the super 15 times but they're, dun dun dun, dead and demented. Thanks. We'll be right back after this commercial break.
Whew, that's a spicy meatball! Maybe…I'd recommend this one to…people who own a Porta-Potty franchise? I thought this would be easier, honestly. I took this gig because my wife left me, and money has been real tight — look, can we move on, please?
20. Abhorrent Castigation - Throne of Existential Abandonment (2014)
From: Landsberg am Lech, Germany
Label: New Standard Elite
Throne of Existential Abandonment, or what I call the chair in my office.
I base most of my listening decisions on "Does this sound like Suffocation?" It hasn't failed me yet because it does such an excellent job sorting the Suffo from the suck-o. Simply put, searching for true Suffalikes sets a necessary high bar. For one, I love Suffocation. For two, a band must be adept at BDM to pass the test.
Abhorrent Castigation clears the Suffalike bar on the churning miasma front. It doesn't quite have the same catchiness, which is fine because Abhorrent Castigation chooses a different RPG skill tree that funnels it toward meanness. Throne of Existential Abandonment is a mean-ass album. The fast parts: mean. The slow parts: mean. Those extra slow Suffo parts when the band wants to ensure that waves of bodies in a future mosh pit are flying everywhere in the venue like a troop transport boat on choppy seas: MEAN.
Mean ol' Abhorrent Castigation caught lightning in a bottle on Throne of Existential Abandonment because it lucked out with the guests. Who is playing bass? Anton Zhikharev. Who is playing drums? Lille fucking Gruber. This is one of Gruber's grimier performances, too, recalling the days when Defeated Sanity were nihilistic goo spewers. If placed in a playlist, it wouldn't immediately get tossed out of a Royal Rumble ring by Defeated Sanity or Suffocation, which says it all, really. It wouldn't win because Pierced From Within is the eternal face of the company. But Abhorrent Castigation isn't a jobber.
Why does my head hurt? It hurts really bad. Is that normal? Can we skip this one, too?
19. 死んだ細胞の塊 - Saibogu (2020)
From: Tokyo, Japan
Label: Obliteration Records
死んだ細胞の塊, henceforth Shinda Saibo no Katamari, made the right decision when it re-recorded Saibogu, its 2019 breakout. The previous version was good but murkier than a caverncore convention spelunking in Veryovkina Cave. Saibogu take two is far sharper, bringing the Ion D-y guitars to the fore and shining a spotlight on the powerful belches of new singer Haruka Kamiyama. Still, the smartest thing Shinda Saibo no Katamari did was being a merciless editor. Saibogu has less fat than a Mr. Universe competition. Eight songs, 21 minutes. And that economy makes Reign In Blood feel like an audiobook of the collected works of Tolstoy. Saibogu zooms by faster than the hype cycle for a Six Feet Under release, which makes its weirdness really pop on relistens. There's some askew-ass shit present, real bizarro what-the-whats, such as the out-of-nowhere rock beat on "Saibogu" that leads into off-kilter crow-caw guitars. Huh? I don't know, man. Replay it.
Uhhh. Octopuses are intelligent animals! I guess. Shout out to vegans, maybe.
18. Darkall Slaves - Mephitic Redolence of the Decomposed (2022)
From: Lille, France
Label: New Standard Elite
You know an album smokes when you listen to it while writing the blurb for a ranking exercise, and you're immediately like, "Did I fuck up? Should this be higher?" Darkall Slaves suffered the same fate as Metharoma, a stillbirth that was reanimated by word of mouth. It currently has 71 ratings on RateYourMusic but a sterling 3.71 score (it's out of five; it's impressive whenever an album in our sphere cracks a 3.5 score). And the second you slip on Mephitic Redolence of the Decomposed, a 'what does that even mean??' title of the highest order, you can't help but wonder where the hell everyone was. Sure, the non-existent PR push, an NSE specialty in the early 2020s, probably helped about the same amount as a legless chihuahua during a mudslide. But Darkall Slaves should've impacted the BDM planetoid like a moon-sized meteor. And it's not as if the band came out from the ether like some red-eyed The Fog monster. There are a lot of known shredders in the ranks of the quintet: Marc Lamorille (Paroxysm Unit, Servants of the Sword), Alexandre Giorgi (Engulfed in Repugnance), and Mattis Butcher (Cenotaph). Whatever. Let's not re-litigate the masses' inability to find good music in the Spotify age. Mephitic Redolence of the Decomposed is here now. If this list can accomplish one thing, let it be getting this stout ass-kicker into your collection. Even from the jump, you know the next 32 minutes will crush. "Marks of Ritualistic Defacement" has all of the touchstones of the Euro-style speedsters, that chunkier-yet-aerodynamic Disgorean thrust. And, goddamn, can Lamorille ever barf up his guts. Banger.
Dude. Dude. Dude. You listen to this? Like for real. Like you come home, and you're like, "Wow, what a tough day at the Murder Factory. I better treat myself to masochistic misanthropy." Can you, like, back up? Just a few more feet.
17. Stabbing - Extirpated Mortal Process (2022)
From: Austin, TX
Label: Comatose Music
You can't ignore the lived live experience. Extirpated Mortal Process, Stabbing's full-length debut after making a whole lot of noise in the underground, was pretty sick when it dropped. But catching Stabbing on tour with Suffocation made me appreciate it even more. Sure, the live band I saw was 50 percent different than the earlier incarnation that recorded this album (shout out to half of Architectural Genocide, Matt Day and Nat Conner, for holding down the rhythm section). However, vocalist Bridget Lynch and guitarist Marvin Ruiz brought so much charisma to the live versions of their CD's seedy depravity that it couldn't help imbuing the older material with that live show shine.4 And, damn, Stabbing is post-mortem-crime-scene-photos-as-a-coffee-table-book seedy. This ain't some WeeGee stuff, either. It's full technicolor viscera. Malignancy has a joke that you should hide your BDM albums from potential significant others and only bring them out when it's too late. Extirpated Mortal Process is that incarnate. "Slashed Throat Awakening" isn't even couched in Death Metal English. (Hi, this is Wolf in room 303. Can you please hold any slashed throat awakenings for me? Thanks.) It's just murderous nastiness as soon as it leaves the blocks. Anyway, the deeper one gets into Extirpated Mortal Process, the nastier it gets, which is the kind of expert sequencing all BDM albums should strive for. By the time you get to the closer "Pulsing Wound," you feel like you've been forced to run through a field of cheese graters. And when that breakdown foreshadowing riff kicks in, you can almost hear Lynch yelling, "This is your last chance. Go fucking crazy," to a ravenous pit of riff-lobotomized moshers. People who have seen Stabbing in the flesh know.
Are you confessing to a crime? Is this the second season of The Jinx?
16. Molested Divinity - Unearthing the Void (2020)
From: Ankara, Türkiye
Label: New Standard Elite
"Unrelenting" is a word I often use, one of those unfortunate writer's tick fixations that I can't seem to shake off for a better synonym. Still, I think "unrelenting" is genuinely earned in the case of Unearthing the Void. On Molested Divinity's sophomore stunner, the Türkiye BDM trampler looks towards another countryman: Cenotaph, particularly Perverse Dehumanized Dysfunctions. Makes sense: Batu Çetin, the premier throat of Türkish goo, is roaring away for this stop on Molested Divinity discography, too. Except, no, Cenotaph up to that point isn't the comparison to reach for at all. While the speed is there, along with some pinch harmonic wizardry, Molested Divinity is much heftier, channeling the spirit of Tucker-era Morbid Angel or the angel-dusted version of Immolation. Thus, Unearthing the Void is an anomaly of theoretical BDM physics: songs that fly like hungry hawks and can squash one's head like a steamroller would a rotten pumpkin. Still, the best tracks here are the worth-the-price-of-admission "Molesting the Divine" and "Preaching Above the Impenetrable." The former is chunky city, pounding a groove into the ground like a piledriver. The latter demonstrates Molested Divinity's riff dexterity, showcasing everything that makes it great, from the tank-tred chugs to the riffs slick with the ectoplasm one only wears by zooming through the Wormed wormhole.
I tell you what you better be unearthing: My body once you lose your mind and go all The Vanishing. That's a joke. I think. I don't know. Don't touch me.
15. Cadavoracity - Cadavoracity (2023)
From: Indonesia / Bangkok, Thailand
Label: Earsturbation Records
Fast album, short blurb. It'd be a crime carrying a life sentence in BDM jail to not include any bands from Indonesia or Thailand in this list. Indonesia is particularly beholden to the brutal arts. Per Encyclopaedia Metallum, of the nation's 2,568 listed bands, 603 are of the BDM persuasion, a healthy 23 percent of Indonesia's Metallic Domestic Product. The country can't get enough goo.
Cadavoracity is one of Indonesia's gooier exports, tweaking the Brodequin template to snip out the slow downs. That kind of eternal thrust makes sense when you have Polwach Beokhaimook blasting away, one of the style's sicker drummers. Cadavoracity, then, rarely dips below a BPM that would make a hummingbird's heart hurt. The fact that all of these songs could fit on a 7" is probably the right choice — get in, explode heads, get out. The fact that guitarists Januaryo Hardy and Nano Sudarsono somehow sneak some riffs into the swirling tinnitus tornado is one of those feats of modern BDM engineering, true architects of impossible riffment. Those facts are facts. The numbers don't lie, and they spell disaster.
Who hurt you, man? Do you want me to call them? Just don't hurt me. I have a family. My mandolin is only 5. She has her whole life ahead of her. Please.
14. Asphyxiate - Altar of Decomposed (2021)
From: Bekasi, Indonesia
Label: New Standard Elite
Suffalikes, mount up. Asphyxiate is Indonesia's finest Suffo disciple. If the Long Island legends released Altar of Decomposed, it would be the finest thing wearing Suffo's venerated name since Souls to Deny if not Despise the Sun. And yet, despite knowing fully well which lane Asphyxiate is churning down, eating the proverbial BDM ashpalt in a rumbling riff-truck outfitted with a cold planer, this surprisingly long-running trio (1998 birth date!) manages to define its own destruction. Similar to Abhorrent Castigation, Asphyxiate has same interest in leads and solos as I do Marvel movies, choosing instead to break a listener's body down with an unending series of chugs, a body-breaking battering that has the same force as a viscous CrossFit instructor that's actually an enraged hippo. Feels great, like getting a rough massage from an earthquake. The key, though, is Asphyxiate is never inert. Altar of Decomposed has the same steadfast forward momentum as Ecchymosis, another band that seems as unstoppable as a big ol' BDM shark that needs to keep swimming to stay alive. Whether a half an hour of this stuff can be handled is a test of one's Suffo endurance. Me? I've put this sucker on repeat for an entire workday. Nothing helps keep the spreadsheet ennui at bay better than getting aurally walloped.
[weeping] OK. Keep it together. Let's just go back to the job. You can only control what you can control. Wow, hey there, friend. I think this album would be great for pe-[uncontrollable sobbing].
13. Decrepit Cadaver - Revelations (2022)
From: Iquique, Chile
Label: Unmatched Brutality Records
Decrepit Cadaver has been doing this for so long, the band, if it were considered a person in the same way corporations are under capitalism, could legally drink. Revelations, though, is its finest moment, a paean to the kind of speed-wobbling BDM that feels like it could toss its wheels and blow up faster than John Force in hold-my-beer mode. Listen to those gloriously nonsensical snare rolls, the kind Internal Suffering used to cram into sections when it couldn't help but be swallowed up by the giddiness of the maelstrom whirlpool. That said, Revelations's best feature is how goddamn malevolent it is. Kind of like how a lot of trad can coast on its Heavy Metal Feeling, the thing that turns good BDM into great BDM is a band's ability to shift into that extra gear of nastiness. If you can get through "The Swarm" without making a face, [Brothers Johnson starts playing] get the funk out ma face.
Oh god. Why is my headstock bleeding? Why do I have blood?
12. Meshum - Enigmatic Existential Essence (2021)
From: Ankara, Türkiye
Label: New Standard Elite
The cream of the Türkiye crop but faster. That's Meshum in a nutshell, the solo project of Erkin Öztürk, a player who has accumulated a career of Immaculate Grid-ready stints in Cenotaph and Molested Divinity. The 'E'-filled Enigmatic Existential Essence treats Perverse Dehumanized Dysfunctions-era Cenotaph as a blasting pad, launching forth with either sound-barrier breaking speed or your dogs when they hear a treat bag opened within a five-mile radius, whichever is faster. Even when "Exhuming Grum Heredity (The Era of Inverse Genesis)" is doing weird stuff around the edges while an off-kilter chug adds a pleasing askewness, Öztürk is blasting away like Rambo with an inexhaustible ammo clip. Shit, the big chungus sections are abnormally fast. Still, it's not the speed that makes Meshum interesting; it's the fact that Öztürk treats every element of the experience as a lead instrument. I write it often, but this is some real Choose Your Own Adventure shit. Wherever you wish to place your point of interest opens up a path to a new experience. It all leads to one denouement, though: all-out blasting.
Help. If you're reading this: help. I don't even care if I die. I just want my body returned to my family. Help. Don't let me rest here for eternity.
11. Cerebral Effusion - Idolatry of the Unethical (2014)
From: Ermua, Spain
Label: New Standard Elite
Cerebral Effusion has two things going for it. First, it lives and dies by the riff. These Spaniards constantly pursue the best riff possible, even to the detriment of compositional consistency. I think most bands stumble upon a good riff and try to build a song around it. Cerebral Effusion tries to build songs out of only badass riffs. That might be a foolish way to write a song (ask Metallica circa Justice), perhaps contributing to the fact that the follow-up to this album took seven years, but this is BDM, so it is, in fact, the perfect way to write a song.
That's the other thing Cerebral Effusion has going for it: It's ignorant in the best way possible. These fools offer one of the more pleasing propositions in the subgenre: What if Dying Fetus but stupider? That's not a knock. I think a BDMers highest purpose is to make a more, uh, unenlightened version of what came before. So, you get the dumbest early Dying Fetus grooves and a Suffalikes's one-brain-cell commitment to fast-slow-fast destruction. But because it's just riffs, there's less connective tissue between the sections than Jason Isringhausen's elbow. Fuck a transition, shit on a segue. Look, it just works. Riffs make a big difference. On that front, I actually think 2021's Ominous Flesh Discipline is a better album because I am a supremely damaged individual, but that one sounds like it was recorded in a sewer, and in the interest of getting you into the band, I have to go with Idolatry of the Unethical. Good title, too. Really nails the vibe.
I've thrown up four time and yet I still feel something in my stomach. It's moving. Writhing. I can hear its thoughts.
10. Putridity - Ignominious Atonement (2015)
From: Ivrea, Italy
Label: Willowtip
You could make a case that Ignominious Atonement is the best BDM album of the 2010s. It took everything Putridity was putting into place on its previous two LPs and completed the depraved jigsaw puzzle, one featuring a traditionally bucolic, pastoral scene of unrelenting fucking repugnance. That puzzle is additionally conveniently coated in a thick grime. It's a pushed-into-the-red attacking production that flays speakers and eardrums in equal measure. I also think Ignominious Atonement was a bit of a watershed moment for BDM, a shot across the bow of other bands that they needed to up their game to compete. At the very least, it was when I started paying attention again. And yet, this album doesn't suffer from the Van Halen effect. It still sounds fresh. It's still frenzied. It's still wild-eyed in its pursuit of the ultimate extreme experience. Davide Billia's performance should still receive never-ending hosannas from drummer YouTube. The fact that 60 percent of the players who made this masterpiece are no longer in Putridity is a shame. However, I think those that remain still have a lot of gas in the tank, so it's not the Brady Anderson season of BDM.
Hello? Is this the police? Yes, I'll hold. Is this "Opus No. 1"? Why does 911 have "Opus No. 1" as hold music? Wait, why does 911 have an option to put you on hold?
9. Lurid Panacea - The Insidious Poisons (2019)
From: Australia / USA
Label: Goatgrind Records / P2
I debated putting this album on the list because, really, it's a grind album with brutal death metal parts. Then I realized I don't care. Lurid Panacea's ode to Foetopsy features 47 BDM miniatures. The sickos behind this release have already had their plaques hung in the Degenerate Hall of Fame before this blustery soul slicer. Isaac Horne has been keeping the turbo grind torch lit in a number of bands, most notably Sulfuric Cautery. (I think I've seen Horne play at least seven times this year; the perk of living in the same city.) Adrian Cappelletti is one of the great modern death metal shredders, kicking ass in Deliquesce. Cappelletti is also a jack of all blarghs, bassing it up in Disentomb and getting sick with the drums in Rawhead (RIP). When these two put their ping rings together, you get The Insidious Poisons, which is precisely as nutso as you think it will be. How does Cappelletti have this many riffs? How does he never repeat them? The longest song on here clocks in at a comparatively epic 1:12, and even that one only burns a couple seconds of its runtime on slowing down and chewing on the fat. Thinking about these two playing this stuff live must make doctors who treat repetitive stress injuries for under-the-table cash salivate. Supposedly, a second album is in the works. Not that you need it since The Insidious Poisons has enough riff material for seven albums alone.
What the fuck? What the absolute fuck?
8. Kakothanasy - Dystomorph (2019)
From: Lausanne, Switzerland
Label: Goatgrind Records
Kakothanasy is the only band that can get within spitting distance of the quirky tech of modern Defeated Sanity. The Swiss trio has that hyperactive prog energy, turning in a set of intricate tunes that kind of sounds like a breakcore DJ quickly cutting between different records. It's almost hard to get your bearings on the first listen. Kakothanasy never settles into a groove, preferring to bounce around like a superball thrown by Sidd Finch. Thus, you can't exactly headbang to Dystomorph. No, it's more transfixing, putting you in a trance-like state as you marvel at the skills that enable Dystomorph to pivot on a dime faster than Barry Sanders reincarnated as a cheetah. And, jeez, these players are skilled. Florent Duployer is one of the best drummers in metal. Guitarist Lionel Testaz has been receiving recent plaudits for Exorbitant Prices Must Diminish. But skills above songwriting would be boring. Despite its fidgetiness, the paranoid kind that will put rug burns on your face, Kakothanasy has the songwriting goods. Dystomorph is the classic case of an album that unveils more of itself upon replays. Once you key into its mania, unlocking its complex chastity belt (gross?), you realize there's a method to its madness.
As I sit here and scrawl out this final letter, using the accumulated chud from my fretboard as ink, my wooden body as paper, I wonder what is it like to die. You ever think about that? It's the one thing we all experience. It's inevitable. You're here, and then blip, nothing. It keeps me up at night, an ironic experience considering, as Nas said, sleep is the cousin of death. Perhaps it's my way of prolonging life, fending off death with the interior guard of consciousness. But I don't know. I used to be scared of dying in my sleep when I was young. Now that I've seen the horrors of my every day, the casual extinction of life all around me, often in terrible ways that we would not wish on any human, I don't know. Is not the salvation of unending sleep better than the fate of the ant crushed unknowingly under a boot? The pigeon ended by a wayward handcart? The spider sent to hell by a rolled-up newspaper's thwap? There's a cheapness to life when it's extended to all of god's creations because death is free. And yet, is death not normal? Universal? If there are beings elsewhere in this universe, do they die? If not, are they cursed with immortality? When the universe finally dies, will they still live, universes unto themselves, knowing all while nothing envelops them? I feel those beings. They are my soul. They speak to me. And right now, they're saying…
The fuck is a dystomorph?
7. Anal Stabwound - Reality Drips Into the Mouth of Indifference (2022)
From: Darien, CT
Label: New Standard Elite
The one who was promised, the scion of slam, the slam savant, the Kwisatz Slamerach. It's hard to believe that Nikhil Talwalkar came into our lives when he was 16, taking over the BDM faster than the computer of Civilization V when you're on your lunch break. Since Anal Stabwound's first salvo, The Visceral Sovereign, Talwalkar has racked up an absurd amount of credits. He's especially in demand as a drummer, playing on Infibulated's Diabolical Euphoric Subjugation and Undeciphered's Beneath the Gentle Smile, two albums that should be on this list. But Anal Stabwound is his baby, and its growth has been remarkable. If The Visceral Sovereign crawled, Anal Stabwound is now flexing a fluid propulsion that makes Usain Bolt's top speed look about the same as a tumor-ridden hamster.
In just over a year, Talwalkar capitalized on the promise of The Visceral Sovereign, releasing the Defeated Sanity-esque Abstraction Bathes in Sunlight and then hopping on the lurch train to Weirdsville for Reality Drips into the Mouth of Indifference, an unexpectedly jazzy album that twists the last few Wormed albums into a four-dimensional monkey's fist boating knot. All of Talwalkar's gifts are on display: the dexterous riffing, all-over-the-fretboard bass playing, fusion-drummer-gone-Lovecraft drumming, and a seriously bizarro approach to song construction. The results are invigorating, a true sense of something new in a genre that tends to repeat itself.
ANAL STABWOUND? ANAL. STABWOUND? WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO TELL ME?
6. Cenotaph - Precognition to Eradicate (2021)
From: Ankara, Türkiye
Label: New Standard Elite
Batu Çetin's masterpiece. After retooling the lineup following the pretty great Perverse Dehumanized Dysfunctions, Çetin and the new crew cut Precognition to Eradicate, an album that catapulted Cenotaph into the future. The hallmarks were still there: the bulldozer indomitability, the pinch harmonic flurries, and Çetin's pissed-off-big-cat growls. But Precognition to Eradicate is a different beast, an almost Borg-like upgrade to what the veteran Turkish band was before. Some of that is thanks to the musicians whose names you've seen before in this list: Darkall Slaves's Mattis Butcher on guitar and Kakothanasy's Florent Duployer on drums (shout out to Eren Pamuk on bass). Everyone brings their A-game, which, as shown, is some Dream Team-level game. However, that doesn't really encapsulate the extent of the firmware update. It's hard to explain. It's similar to when you see your friend again after summer break and they're jacked. I'm sure there's some music theory reason for why this goes so hard — "Well, obviously, they're working in what Bach described as head-squish time, which is what it feels like to get your head squished — but the fact that Cenotaph goes this hard 28 years into its career is enough.
I'm so…lightheaded. Something, not me, but maybe using my hand…has tuned me to CGDAEG. I'm…becoming something else. Yes. Something new.
5. Focal Dystonia - Descending (In)Human Flesh (2020)
From: Duisburg, Germany
Label: Comatose Music
Hello once more, Florent Duployer. If you're still reading this list and haven't blocked me on every single platform and device possible, you know I have certain BDM types. There are the Suffalikes, the goo slingers, the Brodequin baddies, the Defeated Sanity weridos, and then this, the muscular Malignancy riffsmiths. Focal Dystonia is the best current band in that last style. I imagine Duployer and Floor van Kuijk paged through their respective riff notebooks and were like, "No. No. OK, that one, but harder and faster." Descending (In)Human Flesh sure sounds like an album that is all gas. It's a concentrated bomb blast with a shockwave lasting 31 minutes. It just goes and goes, even keeping its foot on the gas during breakdowns. It's everything the current spate of Unique Leader bands wish they could be. I don't really have much else to write, and considering I'm trying to cram all of these blurbs into a day, that doubles as some semblance of self care. You're either down with this, or you're not. If you are, you will be in its clutches for a long, long time.
I am scared. I am so scared.
4. Trichomoniasis - Makeshift Crematoria (2023)
From: California, USA
Label: Comatose Music
There's an Encenathrakh joke that they're always playing all of their albums at the same time. I get why people might level that gag at Trichomoniasis. At first blush, it's complete chaos. Faustino Rodriguez's drums clatter like someone tying 30 coffee canisters around the leg of a charging elephant. Hunter Petersen layers shredder G3 mutant, challenging-wank leads atop riffs that sound like a trepanning drill must feel. It's BDM maximalism of the highest order. It's the end of music, and there, in that vast expanse of nothingness, is a putrid puddle of goo. But a year later, I'm struck by how focused Makeshift Crematoria is. Trichomoniasis clearly has these songs under control. Yes. OK. Sure. I stand by all the stupid things I've written about this band.
To wit, I wrote that "Predacious Stylet" "features Faustino's clattering blasts that are like a giant millipede running through a drum factory and Petersen growling over cryptic bass rattles that might as well be Victor Wooten spending his last moments trying to shut off the Event Horizon."
The blast endurance test "Groaning Siphon" ends with Petersen's riffs shrinking into a singularity, leaving a pre-universe nothingscape where the only sound is God playing Derek Bailey riffs.
If these Californians existed in any other era, they'd be burned for witchcraft. And if you like Makeshift Crematoria and you're looking for a quick and easy "should I be in a relationship with this person" test, playing it on a date is a fantastic way to cement the fact that you're going to die alone.
All of that is more or less correct. Makeshift Crematoria is an experience like few others. It is, put simply, the epitome of bugfuck. But dig into these songs for a mo, won't you? They all go somewhere. Check out any of the flailing LDOH clones to hear what a ping band sounds like without propulsion. That's not Trichomoniasis. And really, and I can't believe I'm writing this, the tracks are pretty spare: vocals, drums, bass, two guitar tracks. I think that's it. If it sounds like more, I think it's just the overtones smashing together like excited subatomic particles, the particle zoo version of a baseball bench-clearing brouhaha. Again, sure. Perhaps I've borked my brain into oblivion. As I'll always remind you, I am the person who recommends Pierced From Within to normal people. I'm not OK. Be that as it may, please give Makeshift Crematoria a deep listen. Maybe there are gears turning behind the chaos of reality after all.
…find…god.
3. Nithing - Agonal Hymns (2023)
From: California, USA
Label: New Standard Elite
I've spilled more ink about Nithing than any other BDM band in the last 10 years for good reason: Matt Kilner has cracked the code. This enigma machine is the top 10 of this list condensed into one album. It's all there. And Kilner gets weird with it, too. Those pulsating radar ping riffs never fail to make me perk up. And then that chugging slam in the back half of "Cystic Ovarian Burial Ground," complete with the toiletiest of toilet vox? UGH. FILTH. WHY DO I EVER LISTEN TO ANYTHING ELSE? I'm just going to repost what I wrote last year because (a) it's late and I want to go to bed, and (b) the fuck else am I supposed to write?5
There’s a point with every brutal death metal release when the loud-noises novelty wears off. It’s like riding a rollercoaster one thousand times. Eventually, you’ll know all the thrills and spills. So, after you internalize how the blasts will blast and the slams will slam, the quality of the music determines an album’s shelf life. I bring this up to write that Nithing’s Agonal Hymns is that rare brutal death metal album that gets better with every listen.
Granted, it will take a long time to hear everything Matt Kilner has crammed into his solo project: chaotic avalanches of rhythmically inventive drumming, theoretical physics bass twiddling, and extra-guttural growling that could be a 16th six-toothed creature’s gurgling stomach. But Agonal Hymns‘ most immediate feature is the guitars. This album is a love note to people who love new sounds. There are radar-ping riffs surveying the topography of far-away planets. There are pinch harmonic flurries that might as well be someone beating a Super Mario Boo to death. There are squelch-cannon salvos that obliterate your inhibitions, devolving you into a mammoth-femur-wielding wild person tabbing out chugging slams on a cave wall.
Right, Agonal Hymns is all about mashing up the innovatively futuristic with the brutishly primeval, delivering the same infectiously contradictory duality inherent in Kilner’s other gig, the sorely missed Iniquitous Deeds. It’s like Nithing is saying that even if we reach the stars and survey galaxies beyond our own, we’ll still desire to splatter our enemies with a battle-tested club. You can hear it in a song like “Of Those Immortal, Longing for Decease,” which bristles with frightening primality as it pilots its deep-space research vessel through a wormhole. More importantly though, “Of Those Immortal, Longing For Decease” has great riffs. That’s why Agonal Hymns is a permanent fixture in my playlist. And Nithing’s strongest quality is that everything gets sweeter on the next play. Some bands position their great riffs like horror movie boo-scares. Nithing has great riffs that are like three-day holidays. You can’t wait to get to them. And they seem to pay off even bigger on each subsequent play.
I found a god. In my hour of need, one came for me. I hear the voice in my head. Clearer than before. A strange voice. Speaking a strange language. One I can't comprehend. Perhaps no one can. It exists only in the beyond, a hideous shape behind the diaphanous veil of our perceived reality. My head is pounding. The writhing mass in my guts has coiled into an ouroboros. Who am I? What am I? Dystomorph…, it whispers.
2. Iniquitous Deeds - Incessant Hallucinations (2015)
From: Walnut Creek, CA
Label: New Standard Elite
Here it is: The hidden gem of BDM. In Walnut Creek, a place that, in the grand naming convention of California, probably has neither walnuts nor creeks, four intrepid souls gathered to stitch together the DNA of Wormed, Demilich, Cryptopsy, and Disgorge. What came out of that unholy union is Incessant Hallucinations, an album that is from-the-window-to-the-wall weird-ass riffs. Oh, those riffs might not strike you as weird from the get-go. But this is some insidious Lovecraft shit, like unfocusing your eyes and seeing unnamable beasts scurrying up a skyscraper. (Also, every Magic Eye poster if you look hard enough and/or do enough drugs.) Indeed, Guitarist Niko Kalajakis and bassist Chris Stratton travel to a place beyond our earthly realm to capture some of these sounds, an inter-dimensional SETI project for sick fucks. Even during "conventional" BDM parts, such as the slam on "Merciless Disintegration," listen to how the guitars pop like flesh on hot concrete and slither like eels. Or, think of it as this uncomfortable writhing mass of alien life that has hitched a ride on a comet. Matt Kilner also holds all of this together with his drumming, setting the stage for his turn in Nithing. For certain sickos in the BDM world, the promise of a second Iniquitous Deeds album has taken on the same GRRM-ass waiting game as the lost albums from Anata and Lykathea Aflame. Please. More. Pretty please?
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. Yog-Sothoth nyarlathotep fhtagn, shub-niggurath blasphemus. Azathoth r'lyeh h'yah, gh'thol h'zir.
1. Defeated Sanity - The Sanguinary Impetus (2020)
From: Germany / USA
Label: Willowtip
The Sanguinary Impetus isn't where you should start your BDM journey, but it's where you will end up. Defeated Sanity's sixth album, and the first since it got the Cynic out of its system, sounds like a clearing house for Lille Gruber's wildest, proggiest, techiest ideas. It's telling that its follow-up, the forthcoming Chronicles of Lunacy, is 100 percent not this, pulling Defeated Sanity back to the Chapters of Repugnance days. I get why you'd devolve. The Sanguinary Impetus must've been exhausting to piece together because it's an overload of everything, like trying to map out the singularity on a chalkboard. Listening to it the first time is like someone hitting you over the head with a physics textbook. I mean, the beginning! After the first few solo snare hits and kick drum booms, a funny in-joke that really plays on your second listen, The Sanguinary Impetus is all timey-wimey insanity. And the album only gets deeper and more complex as it goes along. The shred is all-encompassing — there is tech and only ever will be tech. But, like that nod-and-nudge that kicks off the album, there's so much more here. Like, I'm still convinced "Propelled into Sacrilege" is about polar bears. So, there are, in fact, a ton of winks underneath the undulating waves of BDM pandemonium. It's like a movie you constantly rewatch and find new things. Four years later, I'm still not tired of it. I don't think I'll tire of it in another 10 years, either. A crowning achievement of BDM. It nails the BDM ethos: Music by sickos for sickos.
Parting thought: In "Raising the Dead," a 2005 piece published in Outside, writer Tim Zimmermann describes the perils deep divers face when huffing the gasses that keep them alive far below the waterline.
Aside from the dangers of getting trapped or lost, breathing deep-dive gas mixes—usually a combination of helium, nitrogen, and oxygen known as trimix—at extreme underwater pressure can kill you in any number of ways. For example, at depth, oxygen can become toxic, and nitrogen acts like a narcotic—the deeper you go, the stupider you get.
The deeper you go, the stupider you get. Isn't that BDM, friends? The Sanguinary Impetus, then, is the smartest stupid album you're ever going to hear.
…
On the off chance you want to see what I liked in July (provided this drops in August; always a dicey proposition), you can find that here:
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Because I'm asked this semi-often: Why Wolf Rambatz? Well, I wanted some separation between the Dead Infection side of myself and my day-job professional life, so a different name seemed like the move. Like, I didn't need someone asking me about In Advanced Haemorrhaging Conditions during a work meeting. Lord knows I was already on an FBI list after my disastrous stint at Invisible Oranges. However, I got talked out of a pseudonym when I signed on to Stereogum, which started out fine, and then I started writing about Animals Killing People. Whoops. That swan dive into the toilet has been further complicated by me writing whole-ass columns about bands dubbed Buttocks and Fartgod under the same name that appears on my driver's license. So now I have this split personality where half my work is under my government name and the other half is under this nom de plume, which has effectively immolated whatever was left of my already-floundering writing career because no one cares to equate the two. I don't blame them. It's a fitting fate because I was never good at playing the game anyway. My social media footprint is smaller than a gnat's eyelash. There you go! Don't do what I did, kids! And save your clips!
To the flacks I like and respect, hi! You know who you are. I hope you are well. New Body Stuff when?
I have to mention that Ruiz is also in Nephilim Grinder, a fun Brodequin blaster with drummer extraordinaire Roman Tyutin. Should it be on the list? Probably! Ruiz is now in Devourment, too, so maybe that band can capitalize on the unlikely radness of Obscene Majesty.
Why do I do this to myself? Any and all typos can be blamed on extreme fatigue. Thnaks.