Hailing from Nottingham, Pemphigoid (named, with considerable glee, after an appalling skin condition), are an old school death metal band with a taste for vintage carcass and early Autopsy. ‘Where compassion comes to die’ is a nine-track album released via Bandcamp, and it provides a compelling, if flawed, introduction to the band.
The album opens, in traditional style, with the sound of a life support machine and some sort of terrible surgical mishap. Rising from this torrid mess is the sort of horrific riff that Danny Coralles presumably hears in his dreams – so far so good. However, where things start to go a touch awry is in the sound of the drums, which sound hissy and compressed. It robs an otherwise fine track of its promised power, and whilst it’s by no means a deal-breaker, it takes a couple of listens to become acclimatised to the demo-quality sound, especially when the cymbals on ‘necrolatry’ prove to be almost unlistenable. However, persevere and, beneath the sonic scree, you’ll find some satisfyingly chunky death metal riffs. Kicking off with a suitably sinister sample, ‘infection’ is a segue track that speaks to the many hours the band appear to have spent playing (and absorbing the atmosphere of) Resident Evil. With a nice minior-key riff, it leads into the gruelling horror of ‘bite radius’, a sceptic trawl through necrotising flesh and stinking, gangrenous wounds before ‘descent of man’ seems to take a more existential stance with its hell-bound screams and gargles.
Short, sharp and somewhat horrendous, ‘endophagia’ offers up old-school slayer style riffing and a gnarly groove, before the lengthier ‘appetite for murder’ emerges. Dank and sludge-infused, it’s a scab-kneed tcrawl through the filth of humanity given greater weight by the split screams and grunts that vocalists Ash and Rich employ. With a relentless beat that perfectly suits the subject matter, ‘mechanised infantry’ is a military-industrial strength monsterpiece before the album ends with it’s a title track, a grueling, four-minute exercise in hissy cymbals, tortured grunts and grimy riffs. It’s weird, but in some kind of perverse, Stockholm Syndrome sort of way, I actually found myself digging the arcane production by the end, the grainy quality bringing to mind the exploitation horror flicks of the seventies, where the cheap film stock and degraded colours actually added to the atmosphere.
From the live clips and the strength of the song-writing, it’s clear that Pemphigoid are a good band but there’s no doubt that the production is going to be an issue for some. However, for those who dug the demo releases from the likes of Darkthrone, Hellhammer and Paradise Lost, a certain charm emerges from the grim sound and it actually starts to play to the bands advantage by the time you make it, somewhat traumatised, to the end. The biggest issue is that Rich’s cymbals sound like they’re being modulated by what appears to be a very heavy compression, and this is something that needs to be addressed before the next outing. Nonetheless, I got a buzz out of this album. Somewhat reminiscent of the nascent death metal scene of the mid-eighties, when underground bands would regularly circulate demos on cassette, there’s no doubting the raw intensity of Pemphigoid and it’s worth investing a little time in this one as, once you’ve scraped away the surface noise, you’ve got a pretty damn cool first offering. 7
Find out more at the band’s Facebook Page, HERE.
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