Immolated Moth is a relentlessly technical death metal project from one-man wrecking machine Thom Bleasdale. Suffering from fibromyalgia, a condition that resembles advanced Rheumatism, which left him near death and bedridden for six years, Thom has been forced to produce music as a studio-based artist for the simple reason that he remains unsure of when and how he will be able to function physically on a day-to-day basis. This lingering doubt and uncertainty informs the raging neurosis of ‘this broken mind’, a three-track EP that digs into caustic death metal, freeform jazz and grind to create a pummelling backdrop to Thom’s fragile mental state.
Opening with ‘Overwhelm’, a near-six-minute blast of suffocating death metal that chokes and burns, Thom demonstrates a distinctive take on death metal that draws upon jazz to inform the technical riffs that scorch the surface of the track. The vocals are painfully raw, free from studio chicanery and representative of the subject matter and the result is a devastating assault on the senses that genuinely makes the listener feel uncomfortable as riffs and rhythms pile up around them. The first thing to note about second track ‘insignificant me’ is the jazz-infused bass line that lies at the heart of the track. Smooth and detailed it stands as a counterpoint to the buzzing, chainsaw horror of the guitars which slowly build up into a wall of sound that threatens to come crashing down upon the hapless listener. Overtly technical and yet not flashy, ‘insignificant me’ is a potent and gripping track. The EP concludes with ‘Sleep, a lengthy epic that builds around a hypnotic riff before descending into some blackened, churning pit of hell, with cyclical riffs swirling over a somnolent beat and Thom’s harrowing vocals emerging from the depths. It is a fitting conclusion to a genuinely challenging EP.
Immolated Moth is a project born out of adversity, and yet the material is so visceral it’s hard to square the relentless juggernaut of sound with an artist overcoming a physical illness. Wasting minimal time on studio-polish, this is brutally raw and bucks the increasing trend toward clinical sterility in the death metal field, and it sounds all the more potent and discomfiting for it. Extreme, disorientating and uncompromising, ‘the broken mind’ is music for a select few, but for those who revere extreme metal for its honesty and defiant spirit, this is a must.
8/10
