Album Review: Verminthrone - The Cull
Reviewed by Matthew Williams
If you are in the market for some music that is heavy, dirty and miserable, then allow me to introduce you to the latest offering from Buckingham’s Verminthrone. Hailing from a place not universally associated with sludge metal, this quintet hit hard and heavy from the beginning with feedback screaming out at the start of “Don’t Trust Morning People” before the groove kicks in and away we go.
'The Cull' has eight excellent songs, that will infect your soul, and have you begging for mercy at the end of it. It’s a powerful album full of slow, crunchy riffs, and you can sense they’ve pulled on a few influences like Eyehategod and Crowbar, plus have elements of Raging Speedhorn coming through their music.
They also mix their sound really well with the middle riff section of 'It Always Snows in South America' being a great example of this, as it gives more depth to the song before the solo blows you away. And this leads nicely into their recently released single 'Kuru', which hits you like a punch to the solar plexus and as lead singer Dan Banshaw screams at the listener, these songs will leave you “Laughing, Crying, Trembling, Dying” well, hopefully not the last one of course, as then you wouldn’t be able to enjoy the rest of the songs!
The middle section of songs, 'Birth is a Rope//Death is a Knot', 'Pulling Teeth (Spitting Blood)' and 'Youth for Euthanasia' allow the band to build on the raw, gritty sound, but they have that extra dimension of controlled aggression and pure emotion that bleeds out of their pores. Credit is due to the hard hitting precision drumming of Adam Connell and combined with the gut wrenching dirty bass sound of Pal Losanszki, they dictate the pace of the songs and allow them to flow, which in turn gives room for the textured guitar parts from Matt Duffy and the insane crazy solos that emanate from Alex Stephenson’s guitar.
They finish off this insanely great album with 'Aorta' which has a really decent opening riff to the song, that is inviting madness to ensue, which Banshaw duly obliges us with, as he begins another snarling vocal performance and then it’s wrapped up with 'Feral' which feels quite apt, as they feel like a band who are untamed and in a wild state, but if they keep producing music of this high quality, then feral they should remain.
