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Malignancy: Inhuman grotesqueries
28/11/12 || The Duff
Oh, Willowtip, when will you honestly ever disappoint me? Seems like I have been ducking Malignancy for far too long; I bought their album some years back when I was getting into Nile and the like, but found the music too technically assorted and, pure and simple, with too many goddamn squealies.
Malignancy hail from Yonkers New York, and have been going for years and years and years. This was only their second release in the space of eight, and made them an act to be feared if only they could get into gear more frequently. Their 2012 effort, “Eugenics”, is an awesome slab of playful, infectious death metal, but on this 2007 effort, we find a band seriousing it up more than their present-day incarnation.
More brutal, less conventionally arranged, most appropriately described as spastic metal, “Inhuman Grotesqueries” is a shaker, but very, very technical. Also, if you don’t like squealies, like Disgorge times a thousand, this isn’t for you; some have said Malignancy sound like none other than themselves, but I find a likeness with the geriatrics of Cephalic Carnage and, most accurately, the stop-start-spit nature of BDM band Putridity, although nowhere near as brutalizing.
So the vocals are guttural, but there’s a nice change up here and there with high pitched shrieks which add a maddening, futuristic style to the death metal – like a measured Devin Townsend of classic SYL days. The guitars truly flaunt their stuff, and widdle, flounce and flurry just about every which way, but mixed with all the dazzle are breakdowns, steady rhythms, straight-up tremolo attacks.
In writing, this is nothing you haven’t heard before, but I guarantee you the songwriting is nigh immaculate and every single riff is catchy despite often being all over the place. Finally, special mention must go to (well, the jazz-bass playing is sweet molasses, too) the drumming of Mike Heller.
While I’ve found him to fully materialize on “Eugenics”, being more held-back, flashy only where required and filling out the music as apposed to splooging all over it, the talent on “Inhuman Grotesqueries” is at its most apparent – it’s like listening to Jamie St. Merat from “Of Fracture and Failure” to where he is now, clearly making him a drummer to be on the lookout for.
In short, this is a brutal death metal record for the ages, the only reason I don’t quite hold them in as much high regard as the scene’s forerunning outfits is because they seem to be sniggering at me with the quality of their riffs being both splendid and playfully cheeky, something I can’t sincerely fault them for.
- Information
- Released: 2007
- Label: Willowtip Records
- Website: Malignancy MySpace
- Band
- Danny Nelson: vocals
- Ron Kachnic: guitars
- Lance Snyder: bass
- Mike Heller: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Inhuman Grotesqueries
- 02. Neglected Rejection
- 03. Indigenous Pathogen
- 04. Skeletal Integrity
- 05. Predicated Malformations
- 06. Protagonist Complacence
- 07. Embryological Teratomas
- 08. Benign Reabsorption
- 09. Organic Machinery
- 10. Genital Hemangioma
- 11. Xenotransplantation
- 12. Pathological Imperative
- 13. Outro
