EP Review: De Profundis - The Gospel Of Rot
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
In order to make sure autumn has a suitably dour start, here comes De Profundis with an EP due to grace us on October 1st. Maybe it’s cheating to review an EP, it is after all less material to have to discuss, though if it’s any consolation, the next thing I have to sink my overbite into is an hour and a half long drone/noise project. Thus do I feel my karma balanced. There is always a sort of sparkling joy in seeing the name of band that you’re aware of, but have never dived into before, crop up on the promo list. I’ve heard more than a few good things about De Profundis, with their 2022 opus securing itself year-end placings from a fair few metal reviewers that I’m aware of. Itching as I am to dip into their carcinogenic wares, lets find out if the venom remains potent.
The band are British, though their influences seem rooted on shores farther afield. The cantankerous belch of everyone’s favourite blasphemous Floridian Glen Benton seems a key point of reference vocally, and while there is a Sepulturacover on here you won’t need it to figure out how De Profundis feel about thrash. The spiteful edge of it, exemplified and embodied in Morbid Saint, Demolition Hammer, Num Skull, the bands taking thrash to so demented an extremity that it gets caught pawing lecherously through death metal’s underwear drawer. Chugs descending with the finality of coffin nails, prepared for their journey into the cold filth upon which the liquid cavort of neoclassical leads spill out in gorgeous torrents that shine pearlescent against the ugliness surrounding it. “Deception” does this sublimely, it’s Ralph Santolla inspired solos snuggled against a wall of coarse thrash riffing and percussion that sees melody and rapture spun delicately into the crass violence of an armed mugging.
The leeway for individualism within even notionally constraining genre boundaries is of ceaseless interest to me. Some death metal bands will, for example, opt for a thoroughly disgusting, sludgy variety in which you can almost hear the maggots writhe within folds of corpulence. De Profundis are of a more slash-and-burn mindset. Their sound rests on the fundamentals of the genre, but seasoned well enough to surpass any conceivable allegations of plagiarism. We are grounded here in the caustic battering rams of old-school death (around the “Leprosy” album) and the most brutal territories of thrash, melded together with a modern but still appreciably gritty production. It’s hardly divorced from melody even outside it’s stellar lead work, with the tasty harmonies of “Indoctrination” an apt counterpoint to the wicked lashings of OSDM that it otherwise deploys with a feverish, impetuous glee.
Last year I reviewed an album by a band called Entomophthora. A big point of contention I had with their album was that the inclusion of a Sepultura cover – while it was a very good cover – essentially blew their own original material so far out of the water that it currently orbits Saturn. You are treading on ice microns thick when you cover anything from Sepultura’s thrash period for the obvious reason that doing so immediately stacks your own work against masterpieces. De Profundis suffer similarly, though to a lesser extent as their own material is made of sterner stuff than was Entomophthora’s. Ultimately though, that’s a case of decent material versus one of the best to ever do it in comparison to good material vs one of the best to ever do it. No matter how the pie is sliced, the cookie crumbled, or the martini shaken, it’s still Sepultura you’re up against, and that’s a mountainous, Sysiphean challenge to place before anyone.
Given the choice between an EP and a full album the bulk of us would, I’d wager, go for the latter. But as a palette-whetterfor something more expansive hopefully not too far distant, “Gospel of Rot” delivers a modest yet enticing platter of deliquescing hors d’ouvres. I can’t help but think that including a cover of a song as superlative as “Subtraction” backfires somewhat, though at least the overall thrashiness of the three originals De Profundis present means that it sits well within the tracklist, but irrespective I found myself all the way on board with what De Profundis were cooking here. On that basis, consider my interest suitably piqued. It’s never exactly a bad time to introduce more good music into your life, and I’ll be scanning a worrisome horizon with famished aplomb for whatever else De Profundis unleash upon us next.
