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Vasaeleth - Crypt Born & Tethered to Ruin

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 February 4 2010 at 09:13:22 AM



Heads up: Hot rails to hell. Texan/Atlantan duo Vasaeleth brings nothing but tyranny and mutation on its first full-length, Crypt Born & Tethered to Ruin. Scuttle re: Death Metal “resurgence” should be reworked to herald resurgence of quality. Chops ‘n’costumes abandoned for nagging infatuation with morbidity. Said approach almost always yields results – or feminine boys in frilly clothes walking amongst graves with more manly girlfriends. Leave it to these kids. Or maybe morticians. The typists of obits. Blues legends.

Death: Nothing to us. Since while we are it has failed to come. And when it has come upon us, we are not. Always found Epikouros more puzzling than he was. Aforementioned quotation as koan delivered in Elvish while pounding Big Gulp Mind Erasers. For the exurb-teen worth his/her salt, Death is upon one always: Supermarket meat aisle, at roadside, crouching cuntstink death in Sharon Olds’ stanzas. “I know you, Old Hag…” Death Metal proper turned Hellenic stoic’s notion of Le Grand End All outside in, wore its mortality as coat, organs pumping and sucking and schlepping waste and fluids through their bloated purploid crimson masses. Only band ever to do this – pour moi, mind you – was/is Carcass. Beings born of bile and phlegm, fitted ‘round spinal columns and loose stacks of tarsals, metatarsals. Mandibles painted over thick gouts arterial spray. Molars meconium blackened, incisors roped with vein, fitted snug round testicular gags. Imagery aplenty and then the sound(s): Scant Swede troupe made good on Reek of Putrefaction. (And then we have the Republic formerly known as Hanging Chad.)

Approaches two divergent – Sweden… Florida.... Sacrificed in lieu of mercenary proficiency was its “fundamental sound”–onomatopoeic miasma of barf ‘n’ blood. Grand Magister Teitanblood took this sound to its logical end, fitted it with ur-religious dicta, sealed hermetic with lock safes scribbled automatic by manic, tea-addled Rusty Ketola. What the band attained via Seven Chalices is as profound and odorous an icon of things never to come as Reek… was so many years ago: A massive alabaster phallus grown out of the bitching over Death Metal whatness, its foreskin sagging, frowning disgust. Bands like our beloved Necrovation and Claws accessed Death Metal from under the mat, dressed said approach down, shirked esoterica and dropped its morbidly obese ass—cannonball style—into plasma pool. Vasaeleth, here at least, stays wildly abreast of en vogue while riffing devotionally and muscularly on “classic sound.” 

I’m jaw-to-floor at the sounds these one-man-vs-the-neighborhood “bands” can make these days. But when a duo posits music as unapologetically bold and free of pretension as Crypt Born & Tethered to Ruin is, it’s a wonder why any of us ever quit sniffing glue. A lot of this shit seems like an accident. Artwork first. Easy lines lazily White-Out’d over Trapper Keepers circa ’87. Flaccid skull formed from dead white line splinters, folds in on itself, falls in shapes planned and happened upon: Sigils, skulls, pentagrams – a winking encephalopodian bung at front center, it’s crown jewel dilated, cooing . Lyrics given plainly—so that we may read of curses and plagues, cremations and tombs, flesh and blood and cannibalization.

Songs carry on as they should. “O.A.” does right by Yawn of Thoth vox, his baritone constant, elemental. His axewerk alternates between massive strips of rumbling sound, and whirling lines that culminate as they should, with neighing tremolo. Antinom fights the good fight on battery, rupturing skins and crushing cymbals as if he’ll be forced to roadie for Wolves in the Throne Room if he delivers otherwise.

Results are conclusive and either come immediately or not at all. There is no journey here. No worlds to vicariously inhabit. Nothing to focus on or fret. No mystic interaction with beings or non-beings given too much ink by insane church fathers and Gary Gygax. There is only the reality of Death. The smell. The taste. The loss and absence. This is a strength and weakness, I suppose, especially after being royally fucking spoiled with Seven Chalices’ total package. We’ve gotten perfect encapsulations of both Swedish and Floridian DM. We’ve gotten a few Spanish maniacs to breathe something wholly goddamn new and more terrifyingly palpable into the subgenre than most ever imagined possible. And now we’ve got bands that are good – maybe great – such as Embrace of Thorns, Claws, and Vasaeleth – who have harnessed a fundamental sound and ridden it into the fucking ground. It’ll do for now.

[Stewart Voegtlin]
Vasaeleth
Crypt Born & Tethered to Ruin
Profound Lore
2010
type: reviews    keywords: death metal, texas, georgia, death, lhp035, gygax, carcass,   

Comments (12)

  • 5 comments
    magoo
    10:59 AM on Feb 04, 2010 // reply »
    "Antinom fights the good fight on battery, rupturing skins and crushing cymbals as if hell be forced to roadie for Wolves in the Throne Room if he delivers otherwise."

    knocking my funny bone with bludgeon on this one...
  • 64 comments
    neu konservatiw
    3:34 PM on Feb 04, 2010 // reply »
    Yes, this one takes me back. More of the Tampa than the Stockholm to it, although I hear the Liverpool too. Timocrates claimed that Epicurus vomited twice daily from overindulgence. Crypt Born is ipecacuanha for all the Gygax-Lovecraft-binging of late.
  • 108 comments
    jniff
    9:24 AM on Feb 05, 2010 // reply »
    Hmmm... must investigate. Speaking of wittr, I saw your comment on deciblog generated some response.
  • 108 comments
    jniff
    9:25 AM on Feb 05, 2010 // reply »
    Oh, and the cover art makes me think of Inquisition for some reason.
  • 374 comments
    VOEGTLIN
    9:30 AM on Feb 05, 2010 // reply »
    Walt,

    Too messy 2 B Tampa. Tastes like two parts Swede, one part Republica Hanging Chad and a dash of Liverpool.

    Timocrates was Epikourous' and Metodorus' bitch. That hag couldn't think his way out of a homo bath house.

    jniff,

    Long time no comment. I wonder if all wittr look like Howie Mandell?
  • 29 comments
    David
    1:46 PM on Feb 05, 2010 // reply »
    Dude, you and I are on some kinda mind-meld on the re-eval of the first few blue oyster cult albums. More should be written.

    I heard the wolves get their girlfriends to roadie for them...or maybe it was a donkey.
  • 374 comments
    VOEGTLIN
    2:15 PM on Feb 05, 2010 // reply »
    Ha! Was that you that outed me on the Pearlman quotation? I guess you picked up the teaser allusion and more then... Well done, David.
  • 2 comments
    Labelskum
    2:42 PM on Feb 08, 2010 // reply »
    Cover art is by the same guy who did Inquisition, hence the similarity.
  • 2 comments
    CA
    2:29 PM on Feb 15, 2010 // reply »
    If by some guy you mean KRAMER?
  • 7 comments
    YAFO
    8:32 AM on Feb 16, 2010 // reply »
    Hey was that Sandy Pearlman or Lou Pearlman, I'm still waiting for the "Stained Class" report How's that going?
  • 374 comments
    VOEGTLIN
    8:59 AM on Feb 16, 2010 // reply »
    Stained Class report is finito. Should go up today.
  • 67 comments
    chauncey chomperz
    12:02 PM on Jul 13, 2010 // reply »
    this record rules. thanks for the recommendation. sounds to me like more muffled "slowly we rot", with less bracing vocals.
 

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