Living Decay - Doomed to Last
July 19 2010 at 04:30:06 PM
Funereality. North Georgia’s Living Decay nails spirit of Death progenitor, Chuck Schuldiner, to suburbia’s mast and runs the vomit ship right up the ass of bogus pretension, affected “evil” bullshit, endless clown-hanky arcana. The band’s first demo,
Filled with Rot, weds
Scream Bloody Gore era Death to googly-eyed, bubblegum macabre of early Autopsy (see/hear “Ridden with Disease,” “Severed Survival,” “Embalmed,” et al.), with drummer Rob Russell hacking forth necrophagist confession while cracking the livin’ shit out of his kit. (Chris Reifert comparison wholly in order; dissenters owe me Natty Lite 30-pack and impassioned licking of my Nike hi-tops.) Best tune here is title-track—four minute+ paean to necrophilia befouled with fanciful imagery, to wit: Zombie rape culminating with “rapee’s” bursting kidney. Yeehaw…
Latest demo,
Doomed to Last, mixes pop-existentialism/nihilism with the same gore-obsessed bukkake of
Filled with Rot. Songs are more realized, acute. Title-track alone encapsulates the sort of “essence qua essence” moping few Death Metal outfits plumb, prodding, poking at stagnant (by definition) notion of “life as death” and its inevitably Lovecraftian flipside. Axe work—courtesy of Dylan Martin and Dave Prae—is more plastic, nimble than before and emanates moldy effluvia of practice space booze/weed reek. Easy and warranted analogues to Florida Death Metal stalwarts are occasionally back-seated to Wild Rags denizen(s), viz. Impetigo. Unavoidable, of course, when the band retches forth “Vomit,” a sunshiney metaphor equating life’s banality to bottomless horking. Title-track and “Snapped” do the H-A-T-E two-step in tandem, while the latter smacks of late-period Possessed, where Jeff B. traded Necronomicon for True Crime pulp and 24/7 couching to “Why They Kill” cable blah. “In my tool shed / My ax calls to me / I’ll quench it’s thirst / With every fuck I see.” (Ever see that Chuck Norris flick,
Silent Rage?)
Three-quarters of this stuff admittedly hits way too close to home. In lieu of personal soul sweeping, Internet housecleaning, let’s just say Living Decay’s appeal is neither specialized, nor “elite.” They are everyman Death Metal—gooey strain conspicuously absent from Metal’s current, popular conceptions. The propensity to laud one’s self as a “Lifer” is rife on the goddamn blogs these days, and not one mention of
Fangoria,
Cannibal Ferox, the first coupla Abscess demos. All that’s here, Cochise, in quivering, odiferous mess. Given time—and resources (somebody sign ‘em, plz)—to further develop, these fuckers will rank amongst the slime they pay impassioned homage to.
[Stewart Voegtlin]
Band Photo by Chris Fleming
RSS FEEDS
TWITTER
print
email
list
big
small
