Album Review: Lust of Decay - Entombed In Sewage
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
I’ve got no idea who it is at the start of “Rusty Razor Rimjob” who purrs out the words “I sure do love having my asshole licked”, but whoever it is, I hope someone tells them that it’s much cleaner to just use toilet paper. It’s par for the poor taste course (corpse?) with death metal though – and seeing as I’ve been listening to these guys since their “Kingdom of Corpses” album back in the prehistoric year of 2004, I can’t say I was totally shocked. They called it quits (on and off, notwithstanding a brief rekindling of the flame from 2014-2016) around 2007 – with this newest platter of liposuction residue being their first full length in nineteen years. We tend to mellow with age; between cataracts, incontinence and arthritis it’s unsurprising that the homely comforts of a cup of tea and an accommodating pair of slippers come to carry so much joy in our dotage. But a death metal band can’t afford to file down the talons; I suppose then the first point of inquiry must be just how much of the old fire still flares?
Fucking plenty, as it happens. And I’d like to begin applying credit where it’s due for the success of this nauseous resurrection with Jordan Varela on the drum stool. Obviously, a good drummer is an asset to any band. No-one should need to be told that. But it always bears repeating just how much life a competent sticksman can bring to the music. Varela seems hell-bent towards keeping things as fluid as he possibly can, rolling over toms and flicking at the cymbals in seemingly endless combinations. He’s creative, blessed with an innate understanding of when a riff needs caressing with a groove or just jettisoning directly into your face like flak with a blastbeat spree. His approach might potentially have felt awkward in lesser hands, as though the drummer was unable to find a comfortable fit with the song. But Varela is able to glide all these parts into place like oiled cogs, sliding from one part to the next butter-smooth, and gluing together each track in the process. And then there’s the guy behind the microphone - If I said that Jay Barnes sounds like Shrek gargling bleach it wouldn’t sound like a compliment but I promise it’s meant as one. There’s an orgre-ish timbre to his voice, the kinds of unnatural mutilations of the spoken word that I imagine you’d experience if bears learned to curse in English. It’s not a growl so much as a bark through a mouthful of boiling phlegm, distinct unto himself and imparting a singular – if starkly combative – personality onto the music as a whole. The focus I’m putting on the vocals and drums shouldn’t be held to imply anything untoward about the guitars or bass, but nonetheless it is these two underworldly presences (drums and vocals) that I’m finding myself most compelled by.
However, if I was to imply anything untoward about the guitars or bass, I would probably start by saying that while the riffs are generally pretty good, they’re seldom mind blowing. The title track closes the release, and while I really like it, that’s mostly down to the way drum patterns flow like alligators throughout it along with the charred crackle of Jay’s vocals. It’s satisfying in the way that it always has and always will be when heavily distorted palm mutes chomp down while the drummer napalms the area with blastbeats, but there is the hovering suspicion that shorn of the versatility of the kit, these riffs might seem a little factory standard. I do appreciate the audibility of the bass, and obviously the prominence afforded to the drums comes deeply appreciated. Also, there’s some assuredly malevolent layering done on the vocal front at times – when the aforementioned “Rusty Razor Rimjob” pauses to allow Jay to regurgitate the track title it’s sickening to behold. But the guitar tone... its maybe a bit on the polite side. It’s well produced and performed in terms of legibility, every note springs forth with crystal clarity, but on an album called “Entombed in Sewage” I would have preferred a tone with a bit more grime to it. If I am to find my final resting place beneath gushing fonts of effluent, it would be nice to have a correspondingly vile guitar tone to serenade my interment.
At the risk of putting too burdensome a downer on things, let it be restated emphatically that this is a good album. When the triplets get going on “Order 66” it’s hard to supress a grin you could spot from Mars, and hopefully it’s fairly obvious by this point that I’ve a high regard for the drums and vox components. But if there is one thing that I unreservedly loathe, without question it comes at the end of “Fetal Contamination Process”, when there’s a sample of a baby crying. I don’t think it’s artistically invalid or devoid of merit necessarily, but utilising the harm of children, even if it’s not serious, for entertainment purposes has always struck me as crass at best and outright evil at worst. And fine, I get it, death metal isn’t the best place to bring delicate sensibilities, and in the grand scheme of what I’ve seen some other bands do it’s not as bad as it could be. But nonetheless, I’ve always despised shit like that. The playground sample at the end of “Necropedophile” by Cannibal Corpse takes it from a song I was already iffy about to one I’ll skip every time it comes on. No different to how I feel about “Fetal Contamination Process”, really.
If you missed Lust of Decay – which I did – then your joy will no doubt abound as this album releases. I’ve complained a fair bit, I know, but if nothing else the main cancerous mass to be withdrawn from this nacreous hill of tumours is this: Lust of Decay have done their legacy justice. The percussion and vocals elevate the songs into orbit-breaking liftoff, and for however much I might bemoan the relative safety of the riffs, at the end of the day, slams and tremolo will always make for a good time. I hope we see a sequel, and if and when it shows it’s rancid cranium I hope too that it’s riffs are a touch more ambitious. Because even after all this time, it's blindingly obvious that Lust of Decay can still deliver the goods.
