Saturday, October 15, 2016

Mass Burial – Vomitory, Blood Rapture






Long, long ago, I owned two Vomitory records: this, from 2002, and its 2004 follow up Primal Massacre. I knew them both as quality death metal records, but was not at all familiar with the band as a unit.

Blood Rapture is the first Vomitory album to see a returning vocalist, as Erik Rundqvist returns from the Revelation Nausea days, and this is almost immediately a winning development for the band. Each of the three previous albums felt like they needed a song or two to get their legs under them, but not Blood Rapture. This is a record that starts right away, from the very first, and just chugs and chugs along until the very end. Another nine songs of top quality death metal in a completely punishing 32 minutes 41 seconds, a full seven minutes shorter than its predecessor. I don’t want it to sound like I’m saying that a seven minute, one track reduction somehow makes the album better than its already excellent sibling, but somehow, Blood Rapture feels more compact, and more bludgeoning than its older companions. I often think that death metal should come in shorter blocks like this, particularly if it is going to be ultimately a one trick kind of death metal: and by now, we have established that that’s exactly what Vomitory as a band is. One single trick, one single gear, all awesome.

The opener “Chaos Fury” begins the album with the familiar guitar and drums stab, but the first real standout track is “Blessed and Forsaken,” the third track. “Madness Prevails” is a bit slower, followed by “Redeemed in Flames,” an absolute rip roaring tune with a slower, heavy as hell bridge section that earns repeated listens around here. “Eternity Appears” features a racing riff that again reminds of the best of Dismember or Entombed. The closing title track is the longest piece on the album, coming in at five minutes. But it is a slowed down, grinding, martial paced dirge that makes it seem like a much longer, more epic track. 

This entire album shines a very bright light on one of Vomitorys’ great strengths: writing catchy death metal. An acquaintance and I used to talk about Deicide, and their ability to write catchy death metal: an idea that never makes a lot of sense when you contemplate it, but when you hear examples of it, you certainly know it. Deicide certainly was, on their classic albums at least, masters of this. But Vomitory does this in a far more traditional, brutal death metal context. I know that you’re never supposed to talk about melody when you want to maintain your death metal cred, but Vomitory absolutely has that working for them, and again, not in the Swedish melodeath way.

Four albums in to their catalogue now, and one thing that Vomitory has not been doing is evolving. From the opening track of Raped in Their Own Blood to the last second of Blood Rapture, albums have been a very steady and stable sequence of songs, each collection as competent and complete as the last. While there are certainly bands and fans and genres for whom some kind of progress is important if not vital, death metal –pure death metal, without any gimmicks or fancy frills—usually does just fine by staying with what it knows. Often times, large or sweeping changes for a death metal band will drive away a fair amount of fans, more so than are chased off by a commitment to previous formulas. I certainly do like progression and change in music, and I usually have no serious issues when it happens. But it is good to know that sometimes there’s a band. Sometimes, there’s a band. A band that doesn’t try to change itself or maybe just isn’t interested in changing. A band that seemingly appears fully formed without the need of a long feeling-out process of ‘finding their sound’ or trying to appeal with some gimmick or whatnot.

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