### Detrimentum: Embracing this deformity

#### 27/01/11 || The Duff

I have a soft spot for Grindethic; they broke me into brutal death metal after years of foolhardily dismissing it as brutal nonsense, sell their merchandise at modest prices and seem like a hard-working label, dispatching orders expediently and getting them to your door in two-three days if you’re in the UK. My shameless little plug there (you have my address, guys – send me cocaine and albums plz), after purchasing the ‘limited to 100 copies’ Terrordrome/Oath to Vanquish split some year after doing business with them last with Defeated Sanity’s first two full-lengths, I went on a blind spending spree figuring they were a label with consistent output, but with UK’s Detrimentum in my possession and a good fortnight trying to get my head around it I’m disappointed to say that, if this is one of their better, most pushed for bands, they lost a whole lot more than their underpants to the laundry basket when the aforementioned incredibly gifted German five-piece departed their roster.

As a brief introduction to the band, they hail influences such as Vader, Morbid Angel and Immolation, plus doom bands My Dying Bride and such. This is quite inaccurate, I’m finding more sterile-industrial death/black with a dry production and generally non-stimulating riffs that are played with heart and musical expertise more their musical guise. They have a bunch of influences, their brutal styles drawing parallels with classic outfits chiefly in the vocals, everything else quite accessible including melodic touches you would find in less extreme acts, surprising for an outfit coming from Grindethic, but altogether a musical style that seems very much appreciated I’m guessing due to its originality. The problem is that the malevolence from classic, catchy riffing in a Morbid Angel/Vader vein is lost upon a desire to create over-ambitious death metal with what is usually very regular if not tepid inspiration.

In short, there are too many influences, and very rarely the best of each kind; some of the riffs are screaming for the band to be beaten with sticks so much is the talent they put to waste, music that wouldn’t have made a “Scream Bloody Gore” B-Side (I’m busting out the humiliation cookies for Detrimentum, no discount prices!). It’s as if they allow their desire to fabricate a neo-nihilistic death/black hybrid (oh yes!) atmosphere to transcend the need for memorable and blistering riffs. You will get catchy and you will get brutal on the occasion, but in-between you’ll also find doom, blunt melodeath and child’s play death by numbers; very rarely the evil death metal so gracefully pioneered by bands Morbid Angel and Immolation. Here’s to hoping they find their calling with their soon to be released follow-up, because they most certainly have the talent.

- Information
- Released: 2008
- Label: Grindethic Records
- Website: www.detrimentum.co.uk
- Band
- Ruoja: vocals
- Jon B.: guitars
- Paul: guitars
- Eddie: bass, vocals
- Jon R.: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Scalestomeasurethemisfortuneofman
- 02. Disillusion Ethos (Of Torment and My Bleeding Shadow)
- 03. Blood Simple
- 04. Dark Eye
- 05. The Flesh Elemental
- 06. Born To Bleed (Losing Myself To Silence)
- 07. Negativity Flux
- 08. Ills To Which The Flesh Is Heir
- 09. The Contusions Of Remorse
- 10. Twilight’s Slow Attrition