Disembowelment {1989-1993}

Disembowelment ~
Transcendence into the Peripheral (1992)

I. The Tree of Life and Death {10:25}
II. Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory {7:40}
III. Excoriate {4:45}
IV. Nightside of Eden {2:39}
V. A Burial at Ornans {14:38}
VI. The Spirits of the Tall Hills {9:23}
VII. Cerulean Transience of All My Imaged Shores {10:06}

Total Length ~ 59:36


Oppressively heavy, at times hauntingly and majestically introspective, this album from extinct Melbourne beast Disembowelment is a diamond in the rough. Whereas a tendency might exist to classify this band along side those of the Doom Metal sub-genre, this release from the band transcends that genre qualitatively and idealistically. Indeed the music has more in common with grindcore and also ambient music than some overly sentimental and melancholic doom/heavy metal.

A high level of musical variation is displayed as furiously fast and liquid 'melodic' phrases flow and progress linearly, subsequently changing down to slow but vast and crushing passages of, yes, ambient riffing.

Tone is delivered through a huge and hideous method of production partly paralleled in much grindcore music but here given much more bass and also some reverb. This production technique allows such slow and weighty riff fragments to hang in an infinite space, vibrating with an intensity comparable only to the energy levels immediately furnished by an exothermic reaction in the sun.

Clean but deconstructed 'lead' guitar lines are used to stunning effect when placed over these fragmented and weighty undercurrents of thunder, as are occasional clean vocals, creating an ambient and 'doomy' variation of melodic grindcore. These aspects of the music are given boundaries by shifting percussion which sometimes hits repetitively, slow and hard, in rhythm with the laborious riffs and at other times changes to blast furiously around the riff pattern.

Progression in each composition is thus often slow, but it is by no means non-existent. Tacks do flow, often remarkably so, but... slowly - due to the ambient nature of much of the music which injects much more space into metal than is the norm, especially in grindcore-influenced metal. This is reflected in the long length of time expended by most of the tracks.

This is vast music and it dwarfs the listener, but in this way it is far from being self-obsessive. I imagine that, due to its impact, it is as much an exercise in ego death as can be achieved by music. However, one's time meditating with this monster will nevertheless furnish questions and highlight the ever groping nature of the human being.