Album Review: Shrykull - Beyond Subconscious Realms
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
There’s a mass to some albums. A physical imposition into your space that effortlessly refutes attempts to deny it. “Realm of Chaos” is a good example; it’s not like Bolt Thrower lack for good songs but it’s as close to an objective statement as its possible to get to that that “World Eater” is the best track of all time. Similar accolades could also be heaped upon the immortal “Painkiller” – from the second those drums manifest in our mortal sphere you know something incomparably epic is going down. I'm not saying that “Beyond Subconscious Realms” is up there with those titans of the genre, but in pure terms of grabbing your attention immediately, the sheer heaviness Shrykull offer here surpasses everything else I’ve heard this year. They wield the sort of tones you only get by filling a pedal board the size of a door with Big Muffs, and leverage it to deliver some truly crushing tunes that I’ll be subjecting the neighbourhood to for the foreseeable future.
The breadth of influences displayed on “Beyond Subconscious Realms” is such that it never settles neatly into a particular subgenre, instead stood astride many at once. Rippling and churning like viscous waves through molten iron, patterns in this claustrophobic nimbus of distortion whirl and cavort. Many limbed and sprawling, one appendage calls forth the raw vortex of Transylvanian Hunger to imbue “Impenetrable Mist” with a fuliginous Scandinavian edge, whereas elsewhere the darksome mire of classic Celtic Frost bares pus hued fang in the shambling charge of “Id Hammer”. The rot sinks deep in heaving flanks, bulging maggots of late 80's Obituary peeking blind and wet throughout. “By thunder” you might think to yourself. “Guitar tones of such gargantuan calibre would make fine work of doom metal sections”. Shrykull evidently concur with the infinite, crushing tonnage of “A Glint in the Basilisk’s Eye”, it’s slow, implacable chord progressions as ominous as the creaking steel of a powerless sub, drifting deeper and deeper into the tar-black abyss gaping miles below. The implosion comes with harrowing bursts of blastbeats on drums that sound like the tanned hides of fallen foes stretched taut over rims of bone. It closes with a brutal onslaught of earth rending slam riffs, the manifest loathing of some chaos-spawned warp daemon reaching through the speakers to bludgeon you insensible.
Yet the palette is broader still; ethereal psychedelia graces closer “Collective Fugue State”, ushering the album to closure on coruscating phoenix wings, whereas “Gateway of Nightmares” lays waste with ordure-smeared goregrind influences. That these elements individually are done well is impressive, but what’s really kicking this into top tier for me is that Shrykull are able to unify all these disparate components into a cohesive whole that flows well from track to track even as each song remains noteworthy on its own merits. Beyond it’s utterly ruinous heaviness Shrykull write artfully, emerging with a tight 39 minute runtime with nary a sliver of subcutaneous flab to it. There’s an addictive quality here; spin after spin the grooves only carve deeper, that sumptuous early grindcore blasting all the more invigorating. There’s this trick they pull, I think with the use of an octave pedal, where all of a sudden the tuning of the guitars will drop lower than whale shit for obscenely gutsy riffing; they’ll slow to a crawl and just grind out the most antagonistic sludge riffs that actively hurl your furniture across the room.
There’s little to dislike here; I might have said, had you asked me on a first impression, that later tracks lack the sheer forcefulness of earlier songs. I still think that’s probably true, but those tracks compensate in other ways. This thing...compels me to engage with it, demanding my attention. It’s blunt force trauma immediately seizes you by the throat, holding you fast until it’s deft writing has a chance to implant honed hooks in your hippocampus. I’ll no doubt be listening to this for months to come, and I humbly appeal you to follow my example.
