Having kept fans waiting for six, long years, Devourment are back with obscene majesty, the first album to feature the combined talents of drummer Brad Fincher and vocalist Ruben Rosas since 1999’s gloriously unpleasant molesting the decapitated. An album that takes great joy in grabbing the listener and forcing them to look into the void, obscene majesty is one of the year’s most potently heavy releases.
From its deeply uncomfortable opening, A virulent strain of retaliation sets out to discomfort the listener with howling noise and horror-movie ambience. As such, when the actual does kick in, in a melee of ferocious blast beats and laser-precise riffing, it’s almost a relief. With guitars that churn in the depths and vocals dragged screaming from hell’s deepest core, a virulent strain of retaliation is an unforgiving and exceptionally heavy offering that seems to get progressively heavier as it trawls its way through six searingly brutal minutes. No less frantic is the aural battering ram of cognitive sedation butchery, a track as unforgiving as a death march through a war-torn wasteland, the occasional stabs of guitar that emerge from the murk the only beacons of light in an otherwise condensed slab of viscous death metal. With a riff that sounds like Slayer on mandrax, narcissistic Paraphilia benefits from Brad Fincher’s inventive skills behind the kit, whilst the production is impressive in its crushing intensity. In contrast, the short, sharp shock of arterial spray patterns threatens to overwhelm as Ruben rhythmically grunts out the vocals, his voice as deadly a sonic weapon as any of the other instruments on display. The album reaches its half-way mark with the insanely heavy profane contagion. One of those moments where an already-heavy album tops itself and hits the “fucking heavy” button, profane contagion is an unhinged blast of potent death metal delivered by true masters of the genre and it is the sort of truly explosive track that will puncture the ennui of even the most hardened metal addict.
Opening up the second half of the record, the band have to work to follow up profane contagion, and their response is to unleash Dysmorphic Autophagia. Shorter and more tightly plotted than its forebear, dysmorphic Autophagia is propulsively obnoxious and maintains the demented pace of the album through sheer will alone. And then, just as you thought the album would be slowly winding down to the conclusion, Devourment pour forth a torrent of abuse with Sculpted in tyranny. Another track that redefines expectations of the term ‘heavy’, it’s clear that Devourment’s sole goal here is to deliver the most punishing record ever committed to tape and they damn near succeed, the riffs acting as a wedge with which to batter the increasingly inhuman vocals into the listener’s overloaded cranium. At under three-minutes in length, Xenoglossia is a nauseating whirl around hell’s own Waltzer and, if Modum Sui Morte seems to vanish in a haze of snatched percussive blasts and churning, low-end noise, it’s only because it’s competing with a run of tracks so unholy, they can only have been summoned forth with the aid of a Faustian pact. The album comes to its conclusion with Truculent Antipathy, one last sulphuric blast of barely discernible riffing and feral roars. It caps off one of the band’s most satisfyingly consistent releases and leaves the listener faintly relieved to emerge, blinking, into the daylight.
That devourment are something of an acquired taste is axiomatic. This is intense, beautifully brutal music and only the hardiest metal fans need apply. The sonic equivalent of the scene in Event Horizon where Sam Neil shows Laurence Fishburne the true meaning of hell, Obscene Majesty is a good album rendered great by the unstoppable run of tracks that sit at the heart of the album from Profane Contagion to Sculpted in tyranny. Not for the faint of heart, Obscene Majesty is aptly titled, and highly recommended. 9
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