Album Review: Vomitizer - Release the Rats
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
It took Michael J Fox a Delorean to rocket back in time; not to dunk on the man, but I myself have managed as much only with this new Vomitizer album. One spin and POOF! I’m back in the 80’s. “Severed Survival” is around the corner and about to blow the minds of a legion of kids who live in an inexhaustible search for the grossest material the 80’s has to lob at them. it’s sometimes interesting to wonder what the result might be if we chucked a modern-day release back in time to the formative days of a genre; would we regard it too as a classic standard bearer of the style these long years hence? I don’t know. But what I do know, is that an awful lot of late 80’s fans of emerging death metal would be rather pleased if this new Vomitizer release landed, sprawling and drunken, in their laps.
“Release the Rats” doesn’t screw around; especially when it leans into it’s old school doom influences as it does on “Church of Rats” and “The Reek of Death” or when it just goes directly for your fucking throat as on “Pestilence (The Sickness)”, this thing flat out rules. There’s this DIY garage feel to it, as if I’m watching it live from a coal bunker. I was getting a bit of a Necrophagia vibe from it, which makes sense considering that production duties were handled by Rune Stavnelsi, who has worked with Necrophagia before. The vocals for the most part eschew the usual death growl in favour of a maniacal yell more in line with Chuck Schuldiner or John Tardy if they got wired to car batteries, this primal howling like a legion of sexually frustrated rabid chimps. It’s high points are truly explosive, the initial revolting gurgle of “A Wonderful World to Destroy” assaults from phlegm-mired depths as the song dredges rancid old-school Obituary riffs noisome and malfeasant from their sunken swamp catacombs.
Death Metal doesn’t always have the strongest choruses, but Vomitizer are able to buck the trend here with some memorable, fanged earworms mulching and grinding their way through your auditory canals. It sounds great too, with this rotund, fuzzy bass bolstering and filling out the material like rolls of creamy fat beneath seeping, pockmarked skin - listened to on decent headphones the album sounds awesome, full and thick while this gloriously crunchy guitar thrashes with mad abandon and drums puncture through like bone protrusions. The odd moment of black metal influence highlights this sublimely, “Something Dark and Bloody Did Indeed Occur” and it’s mirthless upper-octave chords like o’er hanging stalactites allowing the bass maximum room to stalk beneath before the mandibles close in ambush at 2.52.
I’d love Vomitizer to do a full on doom release. When they hit that gnarly Sabbath-smoking-cordyceps swing it hurts so damn good. But there are some occasions of filler here – “Indulge into Chaos” is simplistic to a fault, it’s promising introduction belied by these lilting strumming riffs that were a bit too basic to feel more than placeholder, and while the drumming backing them up is frantic, it can’t fully overcome the problem of the riffwork being a little pedestrian by comparison with Vomitizer’s efforts elsewhere. “Rattus Rittualis” on the other hand initially comes across as more of the same harrowing march to Golgotha that they’ve summoned so well on the other slower tracks across the release, but it’s less than two minutes long and felt like ended more quickly than it should, before it’s ideas were explored as fully as they deserved. The bag is overall a little mixed as a result though it does in the end lean much more on the positive side than otherwise. There’s this energy to it, this punk vivaciousness that speaks to a group of folks gathered together solely to beat the shit out of their instruments and make as revolting a cacophony as they can. That spirit, the gleeful noisemongery of it, appeals to me mightily, and paves over its occasional songwriting setbacks with sheer exuberance. It feels passionate, and that counts for a lot to me, that intangible quality that spans the gap between a song played with a clinical precision and the same one played with verve and unrepentant enthusiasm.
I’ve thrown up enough over my life to know I’d sooner not make a hobby of it, but don’t tell my drinking habit that. If the idea behind a theoretical machine called a “Vomitizer” was to induce vomiting, then I can at least gratefully thank the band for making the experience a pleasant one. With a bit more tightness to the writing Vomitizer could become something formidable within the revivalist OSDM scene, so if you’re looking for an atavistic kicking, rejoice - your search has come to closure.
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