Album Review: Swelling Repulsion - Fatally Misguided
Reviewed by Sam Jones
Swelling Repulsion admittedly aren’t a name I’m all too familiar with, however when you’re releasing your upcoming album sporting artwork that looks like a Salvador Dali-inspired piece, it’s going to draw me in. Formed in 2016 from Colorado, United States, Swelling Repulsion are a death metal act with a slight Progressive edge to them so, as we tune into them for the first time, their songwriting will likely harbour a unique edge to its strike. Unleashing their first EP, Dissociated, in 2021, it was quickly followed suit by their debut full length titled The Severed Path. We’d receive a Single a year later, yet it’s only now a full two years on and via a contract with Transcending Obscurity Records, that the band are ready to release their forthcoming record: Fatally Misguided. Signing on to a revered record label for a June 7th release date, Swelling Repulsion are again primed for another opus of progressive death metal. Let’s see what these guys are made of.
It’s curious that the band don’t immediately opt to drill your head to the wall in a complete onset of fury. Granted, the power comes sooner rather than later but those opening seconds the record gives us are more to settle us into their nuanced style I believe. It also shows us their songwriting isn’t always going to gunning for the throat and, owing to their progressive tendencies, there may be segments that branch away from the extremity somewhat. What strength the band do demonstrate however is massive; it’s not quite as copious as cavernous or cacophonous death metal would become but the band fill enough space on record for your attention never to wane, nor does our engagement lessen at any point. Their riffs are these juggernauts, coming down from great heights with the density of concrete slabs, and while they play with speed their tempo is often moving back and forth so there’s no one homogenous flow the record is at risk of falling under. The record knows when to streamline things and when to lay the power down with a fist.
Now, whether it’s down to mixing, individual influence or the band’s progressive nature, the bass work here is wonderful and, furthermore, its audible at every conceivable point of the record. Even if the riffs are barrelling down upon you, the bass manages to be its complete own entity. It’s never having to directly answer to the primary guitar work, you could easily listen and experience both of them at the same time and discover twice as much to remember within a single track; fortunately Fatally Misguided has eight tracks in total, so the possibilities for pleasant surprises are more than numerous. It also highlights the band’s progressive nature too; rather than writing music that’s incredibly elaborate, their guitar and bass work will have these equally impressive sequences but the band are purposefully meshing them together to create this misshapen, perturbed style of sound where it sounds like chaos, but it’s a chaos deliberately crafted and thusly we aren’t left out in the cold wondering what’s going on since their track structures hold up. It’s an interesting way of writing progressive death metal but one that always keeps us on our toes since the band write off anything overtly predictable.
With the instrumentation deciding not to play by the conventional rule book, it oddly comes down to the vocals to maintain a semblance of grounded reality. Now, there are moments where the record calms down enough for us to return to Earth such as the track “Sacred Doom”, but for the most part the instrumentation is this malleable ooze that easily strikes in whatever direction it so chooses. The bellowing, guttural vocals are in fact the most typical thing a work of extreme metal could implement in this record, they are easily the thing audiences will latch on to, in order to help make senses of what’s happening. I think it was imperative the band gave us something concrete to latch onto due to the band’s otherwise erratic style of playing. A complete absence of guitar solos also minimises chances of the flow of music relaxing at certain points, so the vocals do become an imperative within the band’s arsenal. Just because the instrumentation may be the star focus of the record shouldn’t dispel the quality inherent in the vocals though; there are sequences where the vocals are much more sustained and, upon doing so, neither the impact nor the power dissipates during these moments. When your songwriting is this chaotic and in your faces, but you can still turn heads through the vocals, you’re doing something right.
Ultimately, it struck me just how quick Fatally Misguided as a record is. There are the usual eight tracks within, but it’s still a lightning fast experience. The band play with a speed that’s expected, but they’ve made sure track lengths don’t go on for long; that’s evidently not Swelling Repulsion’s style. These guys aren’t Beyond Creation, they’re not vying for these experimenting, open-ended songs where the songwriting is given all this freedom to do whatever it wants. By limiting the time they have to work with, Swelling Repulsion ensure their songwriting gets to the point of what they’re trying to play and it clearly benefits their melting cauldron of riffs and basslines because I think a near-eight minute track, a full record’s worth of tracks, of what they perform here would be a little arduous and might have resulted in my engagement flaking under the continued bombardment of such an uncompromising assault. Other than the closing piece, we spend sometimes not even four minutes with a single track, but that just means repeat listens are more viable an option since, following the first listen, we know our time is respected whereby the band don’t meander through the maze showing us every single twist and turn. Swelling Repulsion just go from A to B, yet that doesn’t mean they’re going to make it completely relaxing for you. If anything, the progressive influences aren’t massively commanding and a regular death metal fanatic could experience this record just fine without difficulty without knowing the progressive element beforehand. It doesn’t punish you for not being a progressive death metal fan and I respect it.
In conclusion, I do believe people who take to this record will absolutely want, and need, to revisit Fatally Misguided several times over because there’s no chance of discovering everything on your first run. That being said, this is a wildly uncompromising, uncaring record that doesn’t try and explain itself to you, nor does it give you any hint as per how its intricacies and complexities may be deciphered. That’s where the rapid-fire effect of their track running comes into play; keeping timespans brief lets the mystique of their songwriting run through the start to end of Fatally Misguided and I certainly was no closer to working out what this record was about towards the end of my first listen. In that regard, the album is a mystery set upon by the band for us to solve, but they aren’t going to make it easy for us since their tempo rarely, really slows down for us to catch our breath before we’re whisked off to the next piece. There are only a handful of occasions where their performance narrows itself into a singular stream of playing and these become the breathers we yearn for. The moment you start to the record, it’s over. Its light take on progressive elements too make it a nice release for people to maybe try their hands at more progressive styles of extreme metal without taking the full plunge since, aforementioned above, Fatally Misguided doesn’t expect you to be a full-fledged believer of the progressive style for you to enjoy yourself here. I was nicely surprised with what I had here as I can’t say I’ve encountered Swelling Repulsion before, and I’m curious to see where these guys go next on their journey.
