Sporting some of my favorite press photos in ages alongside a dumptruck full of depraved, bone-gnawing riffs this sophomore album from Trollhättan, Sweden-based death metal trio VOMITROT is short, savage and obtuse but nowhere near as stupid as their club swinging, bloody-faced “caveman death metal” imagery suggests. ‘Emetic Imprecations‘ is a rotted-out ‘old school’ minded experience which shows no interest in stepping out into enlightenment, instead digging deeper into their cavernous agenda in search of primordial death, the miasmic origin of atmospheric brutality given a nauseated and suffocating grind into the dirt. Ruthlessly beaten into form and otherwise clearly built on warlike intensity this second record also smartly leans back into the drearily doomed edge of their earliest work, easing on the mechanical slapping of their gear for a more believably vile, primally sourced beast.

Vomitrot formed circa 2019 between folks who’d generally been associated with atmospheric black metal acts (Æternum Infinitus, Svältvinter) in the past and a few members have been/are key parts of long-standing blackened funeral doom band Gravkväde. They’d brought absolutely none of those styles into this band as their earliest work, a rehearsal demo from 2020, focused on what I’d described as heinous death/doom metal with a war metallic tendency which I suppose fits closer to the demo-era stuff from Winter and Disembowelment, that school of lumbering and buzzing death, than anything else to start but ended up resonating closer to Grave Upheaval as the demo trudged on. You can find a remixed reissue of that tape online but the effect is about the same, cavernous and sickening stuff with a pretty simple rhythmic focus. Slapping, putrid and completely obnoxious the band’s debut LP (‘Rotten Vomit‘, 2022) didn’t receive a ton of notice for the sake of its independent digital release preceding the physical editions which came later but the right sort of folk caught onto the band’s style at the time. They’d more-or-less done what any band should do on their post-demo era debut and that means delivering upon the general promise of the demo with a serious go of it and it was a louder, faster, meaner beast.

It was also completely bone-headed in terms of coldly slapped-at death metal tunneling to nowhere. If you’re following through their discography for precedence this’ll seem like a pronounced shift as they’d obviously drank the war metal Kool-Aid on ‘Rotten Vomit‘ and taken on a martial, punishing pulse while still desiring the cavernous classics-era Incantation-esque atmosphere of bands like Triumvir Foul and Ruin Lust. It’d made for a repetitive but appreciably brutal experience that’d kinda gone off the rails just often enough to remain interesting, for my own taste maybe just a few spins. I wouldn’t say Vomitrot won me over with that first record and I wasn’t anticipating liking this one much but it did have a real slap to it and I’d appreciated that they’d fully leaned into it. Today ‘Emetic Imprecations‘ isn’t necessarily the same thing but rather a splitting of the difference between the demo material’s ability to reach the atmospheric lows, doom out a bit, and still retain the more rawly bludgeoned affect of their debut LP (see: “Gomorrahian Excrement”.)

That really is the gist of it as ‘Emetic Imprecations‘ is a short (~26 minute) and ugly-ass death metal experience spanning just six songs, each of which advances in their length over the span of the full listen. There is a progression, a downward-set spiraling into mindloss and primitivity as the album settles in wherein opener “Envomited” clunks and spasms in cold-swatted escalation as their slowly thrashed through guitar progressions remind us they are still a bestial death metal band in practicum even if it all feels more like a death-doom bulldozer along the way. The album doesn’t really pick up for my own taste until they begin transitioning from war metallic slaps into more mid-paced chunkers on “Odious Fetid Aberrations” eventually taking on more of an atmospheric and slow-crushing set of riffs toward the end of the song. From there “Heinous Sulphuric Phlegm” was the hingepoint of interest for my own taste as it features some of the best rhythmic variety in terms of its tunneling tempo shifts and the swaying, bumping and dodging riffcraft which ensues otherwise. The second half of this album has all of the good stuff from my point of view.

They’re finally hitting their stride as the opening riffs from “Gomorrahian Excrement” burst through, skronking in transition toward the mania of the main verses of the song as glowering tremolo-picked passages and slow-chugged breaks create the heaviest push-and-pull dynamic of any song on ‘Emetic Imprecations‘ and finds the band showing some mastery of doom and their ability to modulate tension. They’re not quite reaching Impetuous Ritual levels of nuclear scorn but it does seem like the guitarist here has a great handle on this type of disembodied layering where the rhythms ring and swell as if coated in slime. From that point it isn’t that the album goes south but rather that it only allows itself just enough time to sink in mind and then barrels through a six minute finale on the way out, leaving us with less than half an hour to warm up to upon revisiting their greater slab. They sound mean ’til the end and barbarous as ever but there should be no major surprise or climax hit upon on the way out as Vomitrot more-or-less walk through about as complete as needed showing of their current intent.

There’ll be no reason to overthink the impact of ‘Emetic Imprecations‘ as a bluntly beaten experience with plenty of rhythmic nuance infused into their grunting, deceptively primitive motions. They’re there for the darkly hypnotic aura their pummeling serves and they’ve done well to break back into their crawling and walking paced side as these tend to be their most natural and heaviest phrases overall. This is yet a slippery, unforgiving descent into sub-terranean depths and there aren’t many footholds to catch on the way down leaving a fine death metal experience in the moment but one that has no reason or will to give us a memorable moment beyond murderous riffs one after another. As such the sound design, theme and merciless nature of Vomitrot‘s modus outshines the actual substance of their record. A moderately high recommendation.

https://personal-records.bandcamp.com/album/emetic-imprecations

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