Malignancy - Inhuman Grotesqueries
March 24 2008 at 07:48:12 AM
Those lucky enough to witness Malignancy on stage, watching vocalist Danny Nelson run through his array of crazed mannerisms, cutting through the sea of sterility on display like a long-haired shark-fin, know that they have long been one of the few bright spots of New York’s dwindling Death Metal scene. Soldiering through many ill-timed lineup changes, a lack of recognition or suitable promotion, the band is now signed to a label whose target audience is bread on such swift, precision Grind/Death. Inhuman Grotesqueries is the band’s second full-length album in nearly ten years. Isn’t it about goddamn time?
After indulging in an acoustic intro (completed later as a neat but unnecessary outro) the madness begins abruptly. Riding on concepts akin to a Sci-Fi version of Carcass, Malignancy exacts profuse, swollen chaos, lettered in vivisection, abduction, and descriptions of parasitic, gene-demented foeti. Like many technically minded bands, they teeter somewhat on transforming music into cold, oppressive scrawls of data via insurmountable attacks of pinch accents and riffs wired across the entire fretboard. However, with greater emphasis placed on mood (the harmonic pattern on “Organic Machinery” is exemplary) rather than pedantic scale exercise, the music remains sensitizing, contained in malleable production – a “slickness” that might well be described as a soundboard wading in and out of gore - that makes it possible for Nelson and cover artist Tony Koel’s bloodied portraits of various mal-practices to converge perfectly in the sounds of impassive hunger, supplication before the incision and the groan of deleted flesh.
[Todd DePalma]
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