Things are grim at the moment. Who the fuck am I kidding things have been grim for a hell of a long time. The world is splitting itself in two over every issue, the internet is becoming a rancid battleground of Trolls and Orcs (maybe Awks!) and every day more people seem to need reminding that being decent to fellow humans should be the default not something that requires a badge of honour.
So, amongst all this angst- and plague-ridden misery it appears what I needed was some Old School Death Metal downtuned to the depths of hell and then dropped in the radioactive effluent of Tromaville.
Sanguisugabogg from Ohio seem to have come a long way in a short time. Especially for a quartet of self-confessed stoners who play the kind of filth ridden , big bottom ended Death Metal that usually fills basement shows the world over.
However, like treasures in the attic, the time is right for Old School Death Metal to take a walk in the sun. In recent years Gruesome and Tomb Mold have been featuring in multiple best of year lists recently and there are plenty of young whippersnappers in trucker hats dropping the chunk like Bolt Thrower and Morbid Angel.
The fact that Sanguisugabogg have clambered through the severed limbs and got noticed by both Century Media and splatter and exploitation gods Troma Entertainment says something. Whether that is that CM are on the look for the next big thing to catapult into the mainstream or they just recognise a hard-working band with some great hooks remains to be seen.
What is plain to see from the two videos that the band have put out partnered by Troma is that these guys take their music seriously but not themselves. For me seeing giant penises attacking metalheads after painful surgery and Sgt Kabukiman fighting a giant radioactive monster in Manhattan I knew I was gonna have fun with these guys!
The music is solid and exactly what you want out of Death Metal. No pissing about with prog passages or widdly solos. BIG FUCKING CHOPS! Rumbling basslines, a snare being battered like a fish on Friday.
Devin Swank’s vocals sit somewhere between Roger from Mortician’s low laid back mumble, a sick slam gurgle and old school David Vincent. He manages to help carry the filth forward and still shine like a false hip joint on a dug-up cadaver. Cody Davidson should be sent to Paiste Prison for the aforementioned battering he gives to the snare on this album. It’s brutal and the kickdrum doesn’t fare much better.
The band is the mutated brainchild of guitarist Cameron Boggs who keeps thee downtuned riffs pummelling your shell from the get go whilst Ced Davis plucks his four strings with low resonance that can loosen the tightest bowels.
“Menstrual Envy” which opens the album is apparently about “taking a bunch of drugs and chopping your own dick off”. That is how things continue, this is not a misogynistic trip down mammary lane back to the old rape torture lyrics. Sure, the tracks are full of ultraviolence and depravity – “Dick Fillet” “Dragged by a Truck” and “Felching Filth”. This is not Gojira – not a whale in sight. However according to the band the folks getting their comeuppance in the lyrics are “bad guys” – sexual predators and the like.
The band have stated that they wanted to make an album that feels and sounds like the ultimate slasher film and there is certainly a cinematic feel throughout. From the opening guttural rasp to the gentle fade out at the end of “Felching Filth” Tortured Whole feels like a celluloid journey. There are even two instrumental non metal interludes. Pornographic sounds like Goblin left Argento in Europe and went to score Tromeo and Juliet. Meanwhile Interlube has got a whole John Carpenter thing going on. These two intermissions serve two purposes – paying homage to the movies which obviously make these boys tick and also acting as a palette cleanser because when the cacophony kicks back in it is like a felling axe to the face! Dick Fillet which follows Interlube drops with the most almighty sludgey riff – it made me do an “oooooooooooh” face.
The fact that a band playing old school death metal with a quite frankly silly and hard to pronounce name have got the attention of Century Media and Death Metalheads around the world shows that they have got summat.
That summat is a fuck tonne of great riffs and killer songs. I am no Death Metal afficionado but Sanguisugabogg (it is as hard to type it the fifth time as the first) are a breath of fetid air.
(9/10 Matt Mason)
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