Album Review: Vulnificus - Inclination
Reviewed by Eric Jones
This album launches on Comatose Records. That alone should probably tell you what variety of microbial trauma you’re about to endure, but for those of you not in the know: Comatose specialise in death metal. But not just any death metal; the brutal kind, the kind that your grandmother thinks all metal sounds like, the gurgling-of-the-abattoir-drain kind, the truly vile end of the musical spectrum wherein resides the malformed siblings that even the family over in death metal at large sometimes shudders to acknowledge. And who, then, have Comatose seen fit to spew into my necrotising lap on this fine morn? Why, it’s only a steaming mound of Vulnificus, freshly exfiltrated from the biohazard lab. So, as I sit here, ravaged by fevers, organ failure, delirium, and a mild ear ache, how am I finding the experience?
The album is bookended by the cruellest fruits of it’s labours, the enamel dirks stood guard about the maw of the album as a whole. “Bacterial Backlash” is a tormented slab of juddering, lingering palm mutes and queasily effective harmonies. There’s something precipitous about it, as though fraying fingertips and naked desperation are all that keep you anchored to the ledge of nauseatingly tense discordant slams that shudder out of the speakers. There’s unease to it, threat, the tart sting of sweat as the handhold falters. It’s broadly midpaced, but the roll of the toms, the kick drum beneath it, the wealth of fills keeps it in constant motion; you’re trying to sprint up a mountainous outcropping even as it teeters and tips into oblivion.
Hold this in contrast to the sheer demolition offered by “Excursus Vulnificus”, with the haemorrhage inducing combination of blasts, gurgles and a slick groove motif showcasing the band’s full prowess. There’s this crimson undercurrent, treacherous and loathsome, of elastic hold and release, tension mounting as an insidiously playful sense of melodicism wraps ashen talons about the tracks. Brutal death, it’s other virtues notwithstanding, doesn’t generally practice the types of tuneful earworm deployment that lends other genres their hooks. Vulnificus circumvent this apparent pitfall with sedulous use of swing and groove, slipping from the descending step introduction of “The Infiltration” unto the sloughing warble of Azagthoth-adjacent lead work before the exposed musculature of a ¾ time slam riff pops a few capillaries in a wet flex.
The production is a sickening sludge of fermenting human remnants. It feels dirtier than licking a petri dish of herpes cultures, infested and infectious, damp somehow, as though the innards had yet to slide fully off it. It’s got a serious – if pockmarked – arse to it, bassy and full (“The Internecine Incarnation” provides an especially illustrative demonstration of this), but the arching mantis limbs of the higher registers are never robbed of bite. That’s a good thing as Vulnificus, in their somewhat depraved wisdom, understand that you can’t just saddle up the lowest few strings and ride them like rabbits on their honeymoon if you want your album to be any good.
Parasitic lead lines gorge beneath the skin, fat carnivorous larvae shiny with adipose. Rancid chord progressions coat it’s unhealthy pallor in insectoid carpets of disease vectors, transmission ensured upon exposure. There’s also due homage paid to the alpha wolves of the scene; the slow fade into “Involuntarily Incapacitated” reminiscent of identical tactics from Defeated Sanity on “Introitus”, which kicks off their seminal “Chapters of Repugnance” opus. Flashings of Disgorge’s “Womb Full of Scabs” when Vulnificus introduce “Intrinsic Inclination”. Yet all brutal death bands, no matter how creative, or technical, or any other combination of factors calculated to inflict affliction, stand on the shoulders of one band alone: Suffocation. Their influence seeps deep, past the mouldering meat and fibrous sinew, past wet huddles of organs and into the marrow itself. “Malfeasance” is rich with their mark, it’s combination of bouncy slams and conjoined twin chug/tremolo riffs that stalk through deft slipgate transitions between tempos alike to a thousand classic cuts from the New York death institution, as are a hundred other riffs and moments dotted like especially ingrained blackheads throughout “Inclination” in general.
For all that though, the album, while strong, isn’t without blemishes of a less salutary kind. “Inexplicably Beguiled” is relatively simplistic by comparison with it’s confederates, and while the introduction of a pinch harmonic motif does spice matters up the underlying riff of it (open power chord, chug that chord for a bit, different open power chord, chug it for a bit, so on and so on) felt a little redundant and placeholder. There’s an argument to be made that some of the samples used to prefix or suffix the tracks are a touch overlong, and also (I’m not sure whether this will feature on the final release, so feel free to ignore this if not) the review copy I have includes an instrumental version of “The Internecine Incarnation” for reasons I’m powerless to deduce.
The vocalist for Vulnificus is a gentleman known to the world as Eston Browne, and I could happily listen to him narrate a phone book. Why would you want less of him on a song? Especially seeing as the inclusion of it makes something of an attempt to steal the thunder from the excellent song that would otherwise close the release (“Excursus Vulnificus”). Even so, the album is a strong showing. If you feel like you’re in need of an utterly filthy experience, and the septic tank got a drained a few days back so a quick dunk isn’t an option, then give Vulnificus a shot. Then maybe go to the hospital and get a few more shots, because god alone knows what you’ll have caught in the process.
