Gathered in barbarous congregation atop a gore-piled landscape Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based blackened death metal trio HORRID MASS take a first stab in psychotic abstraction of their raw death metal foundations on this oppressive, bludgeoning debut full-length album. Sidling unthinking grooves with conditionally abstract, noisome blackened death hammering ‘Nauseating Ecstatic Degeneration‘ demonstrates an above average wield of slimed-over bestial aggression. Well-formed as a simple enough debut statement but rife with muscularly chunked rhythmic details these folks’ve crafted a proper delirious maze of a first impression herein.

Horrid Mass formed circa 2022 by way of bassist/vocalist Nick Lewis (ex-Pig’s Blood), guitarist Tony Capodilupo (Cryptual, ex-Carnal Ruin) and drummer Spencer Powers (Apocalyptic Session) intending to stir up their own version of primal death metal. Their first crack at it via demo tape (‘Formless Dread‘, 2023) leaned into doomed trudging, mid-paced movements and a cavernous sound. Think of the slower-grinding edge of Archgoat, Cianide and the trample of new-old school takes on classic Bolt Thrower as a basic reference from where they’d kicked things off. Building atop that foundation the band has worked to include more bestially struck atmosphere and some abstract movement in the process of creating this debut LP.

In addressing the extremes available to their original idea Horrid Mass have managed a far more compelling result as their vision for blackened death metal takes on many-tendril’d vision which is too restless to squarely nail down. Their approach still bears some of its mid-paced neo-OSDM dawdle but doesn’t center itself around those grooves long, rather finds a doomed or frantic angle to work from. Opener “Worthless Mote” breaks out with said grooves to start sounding a bit like a death n’ roll band beyond the noise-riddled into before hitting a huge-ass distorted bass guitar tone and flatly slapping into scene. It won’t be obvious enough ’til you’re at least a couple of tracks into ‘Nauseating Ecstatic Degeneration‘ but part of the band’s goal here is abstraction, to dip into experimentation with bestial blackened frontage and dissonant tunneling movements along the way.

From Incantation to Autopsy you can feel the bones of the band’s style within songs like “Writhe” to some extent but things get more interesting around “Execration”, a ~seven minute steer between dissonant blackened death unnerve and simpler bopping death metal grooves something like self-titled Ruin Lust but with a quasi-death/doom metal staked interruption in the midst of its creeping blasts. “Cruelty” carries more of a black/grind tack through its movements but you’ll start to see the compositional shaping of each of these songs become somewhat predictable with most of Side A considered. Most of my favorite moments on ‘Nauseating Ecstatic Degeneration‘ come on the second half despite some fairly strong variety spread across the first four or five pieces.

The ‘Gateways to Annihilation‘-level spasming found on “Loathsome” locked it in as my favorite of the lot here when listening to Horrid Mass‘ work on repeat, a fairly straightforward piece which flows mercilessly between its various stances and glues itself to its surroundings. Just as “Execration” laid out the potential ouevre of the band in one piece early on so does “Violent Ascent” present that same dynamic but with greater intensity and a higher riff count, less focused on jogging paced movements. There the band’s combination of chunkier death grooves and atmospheric death groan finds its most inspired drive. While you’ll find some nuance to some of these movements, a few of the riffs kinda fly of the handle a little bit here and there, most of ‘Nauseating Ecstatic Degeneration‘ rings as so unadorned, less than gilded in presentation that it all mashes together in mind as semi-dissonant blackened death metal tunneling throughout. Very few points give pause, interrupt or stand out within their trudge between modes.

The boon of this approach is that ‘Nauseating Ecstatic Degeneration‘ reads as dark as an old caverncore record but arrives with a simpler hand and closer-set atmospheric presence. This serves their goal of primal intensity well though I’d ultimately found their more OSDM leaning riffcraft lacking the doom metal aspect of their demo material. Likewise I was surprised to find a lack of indulgence in noise interludes and such beyond a few intros and “S.H.E.D.” but this keeps the full listen at a tightly wound ~36 minutes either way. I don’t know that Horrid Mass have knocked me out of my chair here with their sound or material but there is an impressive ouevre on hand here. Their work is admirably dismal, irrational enough that it makes for an effective listen which covers a lot of ground but remains believably rooted in some manner of classic death metal adjacency. A moderately high recommendation.

Memento Mori LABEL/MAILORDER

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