Feeling your guts, leaning into the instinctive nausea that comes with exposure to death and decay, charges the mind with adapting (if ever) to its most visceral reaction down to the abdominal floor… at least ’til exposure grants fortitude, numbness to crushed and rotten humanity on display. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based death metal quartet PISSGRAVE present the reality of death in tactless spread and spray of gore for the sake of assuming traumatic fortitudes have been instilled into the connoisseur of the riff on this third full-length album. A cessation in its own right as we consider a greater trilogy conceived, ‘Malignant Worthlessness‘ is not a celebration of sickness and brutality so much as a feverishly scribbled manifesto of contempt for humanity, a channel of pure nihil meant to be fitting for the creation of death metal music and a chest-struck dehumanization of all.

Pissgrave formed circa 2013 between musicians largely known for sludge and stoner/doom adjacent bands prior. While folks tend to get excited when an unknown death metal band strikes with conviction and the details are still obscure the crumbling, busted rehearsal level burn of ‘Pissgrave‘ (2014) wasn’t the be-all-end-all some would claim in the heat of the moment. It was however a vicious act of bestial death metal which found its early distinction in goregrind-level vocals that’d been pitch-shifted to Hell, at least when they weren’t inserting Benton-esque rasps as their main directive. Vocals aside their work was of course more about a different angle on the then popular uprising of “war metal” adjacent sounds and their work focused on the riffs over the course of its substantial reap. That demo absolutely warranted quick signing on for a three album option since they’ve suggested a trilogy of albums had been envisioned. The first of the trilogy (‘Suicide Euphoria‘, 2015) felt like it’d muted the outrageous clamor and (largely bass frequency void) blur of the demo tape, doing a service to some of those demo tracks (re: “Second Sorrowful Mystery”) but not quite as well as we’d find on their follow up (“Rusted Wind”) which’d “slapped” much harder from my point of view.

It is inevitable that we should bring in some ponderance of aesthetics, shock value and in the case of this band’s output… it ain’t that deep, as I’d suggested in review of the bands’ second LP (‘Posthumous Humiliation‘, 2019) the shock of gore rarely pulls in folks concerned with the riff and the austere, “serious” qualities of death metal but Pissgrave use gore as a supreme point of shocking ugliness and no, I won’t go as far as to suggest there is anything artistic about it. So much about death metal has been commodified into harmless geekdom anymore that the use of the most horrifying scenes of rotting death and gore ring as anti-commercial, directly in opposition to the internet addicted security of social engineering today. Don’t consider it a counter culture just yet, just consider it a note on the efficacy of ye olde extremes offered on the subject of death and death metal. In the case of ‘Malignant Worthlessness‘ we are greeted by rot, a dried and rotting (probably) skull covered in maggots, a scene of late stage putridity that speaks to contempt for the most pitiful dissolution of the flesh, a dehumanization of the individual to the most extreme degree beyond death: Spoiled meat and bone.

Extraneous considerations aside ‘Posthumous Humiliation‘ is thus far the most clear and whipping capture of Pissgrave‘s impressive rhythm section, specifically drummer Matt Mellon, and I say this because ‘Malignant Worthlessness‘ appears more interested in focusing on the guitar tone overall as we break directly into the bloodied blasphemies of opener “In Heretic Blood Christened“. Ear-grinding from the first chord this opener doesn’t appear to either replicate or build upon the previous album’s sound design, instead scraping and ripping through its tones in as brutal order as possible leaving the vocals garbled and the drums whipping mercilessly beyond. That level of bulldozing nausea is the key feeling explored on all previous releases and no sense of “progress” or refinement aimed at fidelity suggests this time around the sound design aims for something even more grotesque rather than “better.” Things don’t really get weird to start as we bash through, though there is a sort of Angelcorpse-esque militance to the title track as it trots along its heavier verses and manages a highlight for my own taste, for all intensive purposes we are back in the same slaughterhouse taking in a serious set of new riffs.

There is a bit of a swimmer in the potter’s field here, though, as “Heaping Pile of Electrified Gore” finds that same militant brutal death metal cadence to its opening moments but soon leans into a struggling dissonant rhythm, interrupting its murderous thought with a heartbeat-set beat and goregrind-level distorted bass growl to end the song. It isn’t necessarily the level of insanity one’d find on a Concrete Winds record… but should perk the same part of the brain seeking bestial death and war metallic furor via riffs and drum patternation that are especially coherent in design beyond unrepentant blasting; Chaos is absolutely in order nonetheless as we step into the second half of the full listen which manages to not push it more than a minute or two beyond the half hour mark and creating havoc every second beyond “Dissident Amputator”. “Lamentation of Weeping Wounds” is probably the song to catch my ear most often in hindsight, not only for its whammy-dive in and sluggish double-bass drummed pummel but for its part in the larger thread offered on Side B, a wheeling and relentless crush that almost begins to feel like they aren’t yet willing to grind into more dissonant, hellish waters and harsh noise. Still, there is a garage bound death metal cataclysm formed here which to be verges on the furor and grime of early Portal at the apex of their overall feat.

Contempt, aggression and riffs are yet the spine and ailing nervous system of Pissgrave, a harrowing feat delivered without an imagination for anything off-subject or mystic pertaining to death. In this sense these songs are less murder fantasies and gore for the sake of shock and more a twisted obsession within the reality of death, representing it with caustic and terrifyingly ugly sounds. For my own taste ‘Malignant Worthlessness‘ has some parity of effect in tune with the two albums that’d preceded it, an acquired taste in the nastiest niches of pure death metal, but this particular thread bears its own delve into rhythmic tangents which drone and snap apart here and there to break things up. It isn’t the sort of record I’m likely to leave on repeat for days so much as an album which I’d pick up to “see red”, to reach for a serious and murderous cacophony that pulls away from the nerdy fantasies that often smear away the visceral reaction death metal originally brought to the masses. A high recommendation.

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