Chipping away at a higher riff-count and feeling their way through properly obsessive pure death metal rhythms Cleveland, Ohio-based death metal band SARCOUGHAGUS pick up the best pieces of themselves as they return to a trio configuration and revise their gig on this latest mLP. As a result ‘Remnants‘ feels like it hits closer to the goal of basal ‘old school’ death metal grooves with a brutal edge than prior releases had while also reworking a couple of songs from their 2021 debut full-length for the sake of contrast. If you aren’t familiar with the band thus far, or weren’t all that impressed by their past work, this one makes a pretty good case for a closer second look.

Sarcoughagus formed as a trio at some point prior to 2020 between folks with various backgrounds in music both related and unrelated to metal, some serious and other not at all. The way I’d characterized their work per the first impression offered by their demo tape (‘Invoking Paranoia‘, 2021) was mediocre yet inoffensive, an incompetent impersonation of classic death metal style and aesthetics with rhythms distilled from the hardcore inspired grooves of early brutal death metal. While it isn’t a musical crime to strip riffs down to non-statements beyond plainest percussive strikes the main issue I’d had with their first demo and the promo (‘Promo 2020‘, 2020) that’d signaled their signing to Maggot Stomp was that their work was barely developed, there was nothing to it. A hundred other crews were (and far fewer are still) doing the same thing or similar and there wasn’t any major reason to take note beyond the kinda Autopsy-esque crawl that kicked off “Force Fed”.

As it turns out that song’d serve as the opener for their debut full-length ‘Delusions of the Sick‘ in 2021 and it was a good first impression for a decent enough album. It was still a green-assed record with clunked-out rhythms and all but they had a few more riffs in hand, a new second guitarist who could kinda wail, and vocalist/guitarist Nate Fey was imposing enough in his presence, distant enough to let the riffs breathe. From my perspective it was the kind of record I’d picked up a copy of for the album art and the promise of ‘old school’ death metal but got a demo-level of development from a young band with no real knack for songcraft. As such, there was little to write about it at the time but I’d appreciated their simplification, or, devolution of brutal death grooves and guitar progressions into easy-riding and plainest three minute death metal statements. It wasn’t a bad record but didn’t make a serious case for itself beyond its cover artwork.

The less things change… — The general success of ‘Remnants‘ as the band returns to a trio state on-album is primarily a function of a more active rhythm guitar voice, written for two guitars, which veers away from the trotting, by-default hardcore built beats of past releases and leans into the more grisly menace of songs like “Delusional Reality” (from ‘Delusions of the Sick‘) as the general path forward. It isn’t a total sea-change in any sense but they’re putting on more of a show here, changing up the pace more often, hitting a few more riffs per song, and finding a less straightforward treatment of cadence in general; Without intending to sound condescending in any sense this is the closest Sarcoughagus have come to sounding like a pure ‘old school’ death metal band and I’d say from the indefinite ’94-’96 era where the popularity of bands like Cannibal Corpse had created its own ecosystem of brutal imitators in the underground at the time while groups like Abramelin and Mangled Torsos found different venues for brutality. ‘Remnants‘ isn’t quite up to that level just yet but a few songs hit an admirable groove here a la “Volition” into “Morbid Ideation” and the mean-assed four count stomp and shuffle of “Fragments”.

Simple and chunking as the first couple of songs on this mLP are, some complexity of form does begin to worm outward mid-album and carries through ’til the jog-paced bopping grooves of the two re-recorded songs act as a reversion, a step back in some notable sense. Those re-recordings are generally the only duds here for my own taste, such as the redundant main riffs of “Cannibalistic Search Party” and its plainly struck tremolo picked riffs but again, I’m not too flustered over a couple quick bonus tracks here. Otherwise the same type of transitional movements between riffs and verses carry through most songs here in such a way that makes ‘Remnants‘ read kinda samey. It drones on a bit at some point if left on repeat but now that Sarcoughagus‘ kicks are built upon blasted-at pure death metal it all basically clicks into place as solid death metal thanks to a much more active sense of rhythmic development with some serious attention paid to the throngs of riff they’re pushing out.

At the end of the day I was kinda split on this as a full listen, the old pieces aren’t too drastically improved upon or changed to warrant their inclusion yet I was impressed overall by the five new songs on this record. From my point of view this is the best possible change to their approach, their work seems to have found a more clear and focused direction and this has me stoked for whatever they do next. A high recommendation.

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