MALIGNANCY – …Discontinued

vote
7.5

• Bands:
  MALIGNANCY
• Duration: 00:33:20
• Available from: 14/06/2024
• Label:

• Willowtip Records

Streaming not yet available

In a death metal scene divided between avant-garde experiments and the rediscovery of everything that is rough and old school, the return of Malignancy will certainly be seen by some as an event out of time, if not even irrelevant in terms of the development of the panorama.
On the other hand, as underlined several times on these pages, the period of maximum glory of the 'brutal' trend – to which the New York band has always adhered, indeed representing one of its most long-lived and respected exponents – has long passed, and the appeal of certain sounds on the public is now reduced to an all-time low, even with a niche of bands, fans and labels still intent, behind the scenes, in carrying forward their values ​​and aesthetics, in the wake of exemplary records in their brutality.
In this sense, the return of the Americans, here joined by Jacob Schmidt of Defeated Sanity on bass, can be inserted in the same vein as the recent “Harbinger of Woe” (Brodequin) and “Sadichist” (Gorgasm), forcefully bringing the a way of approaching the genre that thrives on both technical expertise and incessant barbarism, and which, continuing the discussion interrupted by “Eugenics” in 2012, once again paints a post-apocalyptic scenario made up of inhospitable deserts, mutant beings and radioactive waste, not too distant from that of the horror mainstay “The Hills Have Eyes.”
The enormous period of time between the two works, interrupted by the EP “Malignant Future” and the re-recording of the debut “Intrauterine Cannibalism”, did not pass in vain, as proof of a methodology that was slow and exhausting, but capable of giving birth to albums overflowing with ideas and details evidently assembled with painstaking care. An attack which, spread over nine tracks (for just over half an hour of music) buries the listener under a ton of riffs and tempo changes which, at first, it is almost impossible not to be taken aback by, so much so does the whole presents itself as dense and intricate, but which, fruition after fruition, unravels like a skein, bringing out the lucid madness of the pen of Ron Kachnic, a guitarist who has held the reins of songwriting since '95.
Drawing from the New York death metal tradition, from the grindcore tradition and from the most intense and paroxysmal techno-thrash, ours is the true MVP of this “…Discontinued”, and the propulsive force of his work is what continuously infuses agitation and movement into the tracklist , in an escalation that spreads from the nerve endings to the rest of the body.
Therefore playing both with muscles (especially during the aforementioned thrashing parentheses) and with brains, with a large number of dissonant interferences and daring convulsions, the guitar work appears 'on fire' right from the opening doublet “Existential Dread”/“Binary Paradigm” , and from there it can be said that there is no looking back, supported by an equally dense and ingenious rhythm section – Schmidt's contribution is incredible, as always – and by Danny Nelson's bubbling performance on the microphone, crowning achievements of a style exhausting at times, certainly 'difficult', but still endowed with its own balance and logical sense.
The classic return which, ultimately, does not disappoint expectations, suitable for those who can't wait to dive into the new Wormed or for those who frequently hang out around Suffocation, Mortician, Dying Fetus and Cephalic Carnage.