Illuminations of Vile Engorgement

At the risk of sounding redundant, I'll take a pass on doing the whole spiel about how this is a love it or hate it album and how "ya either get it or ya don't get it" because, well, take a look at the scores. Do I really have to say it? The way I interpret album reviews is not by the score, but by the text. It seems obvious, but music is so subjective that reading about the characteristics of an album is significantly more telling than reading someone else's opinion regarding said characteristics. For an example with respect to my personal tastes, if I read a (hypothetical) 0% review in which the author remarked that the music s/he heard was naught but "stupidly simple slams with no melody whatsoever" and that the singer sounded like he was "puking into the microphone invariably" and concluding with an advisement to avoid, I would do anything but. In fact, I would be chomping at the bit to hear this album! With that being said, you can forget about reading a rant hereforth, as I'm going to simply elucidate the music of Illuminations of Vile Engorgement and ponder the whys and wherefores concerning my enjoyment of such. From this, you can decide for yourself whether or not perusing or pursuing this controversial album would be in your interest.

An opener like "Bloated Slabs" is flat out rude. It has no consideration for more sensitive listeners who aren't ready for this kind of onslaught. The track begins as if it were mid song, sans a sample, sans an expository riff, sans anything, really. It just assaults you from the get go. The first slam of the album comes exactly five seconds into the song. Yeah, five seconds. An opener like this is analogous to breaking a fay virgin in by ramming it into her asshole with no warning... or lube. Personally, this is what I feel death metal should be. That is, malevolent, sadistic, brutal, and it doesn't dick around with synthetic (in some cases, synthesized) pleasantries for the purpose of accessibility. Clearly, Enmity is not concerned with being accessible. If a band like Deeds of Flesh is like a wheelchair ramp to get into death metal, Enmity is like a rickety rope bridge over a flame engulfed canyon with punji sticks at the bottom of it. Be wary, there's a fire breathing dragon awaiting you should you choose to cross over.

I'm not going to lie and say that the riffs on this album are anywhere near discernable. On the contrary, the guitar playing on Illuminations of Vile Engorgement has only two functions: to pick rapidly and to chug. Ditto for the bass performance. Can it be that it was always so simple? Not quite. Enmity can pull this off only because it fits their aesthetic. That aesthetic is, in a word, ugliness. And let's not kid ourselves, ugliness has been the metier of death metal ever since Possessed buttfucked the scene with Seven Churches back in '85, so that's nothing new. It's just been a while since I've heard it pushed to such extremes, or rather, done so goddamned effectively. Case in point, on any other album, Enmity's brand of celeritous, unceasingly bludgeoning drum work would be a crux. Yet, on Illuminations of Vile Engorgement, a crutch becomes a contribution, as the rancorous drumming only heightens the hideousness.

The vocals? Grotesque, as promised. What I enjoy about them in particular is the fact that they don't sound human. I mean, like, literally, the sounds eminating from this man's throat have no business doing so. I've seen them classified as pig squeals, but I must run counter to this, for the most part. To me, the vocals are difficult to typecast, because they're kind of like a hybrid between a gurgle and a squeal. Shoot, that's like crossbreeding orcs and goblins, two ugly ass constituents in and of themselves, to create uruk-hai, an aberration that's even moreso objectionable. Is the vocal performance any good? Well, maybe not in the technical sense, but without them, this album would be stripped of its atmosphere. Said atmosphere lies not exclusively in the technique of the vocalist, but also in the way they're produced on the album. They sound, for lack of a better term, distant. I don't mean "distant" in the way vocals are produced in bedroom black metal projects, but more as if there's a feeling of dread, as in you sense that the source of these monstrous caterwauls is drawing closer... closer... closer yet. Really, it sounds as though you're listening through a sewer, and Enmity's vocals is what you're hearing (kind of like that little boy in the movie IT, remember?). C'mon now, what says "brutal death metal" more than guttural emissions from a sewer monster that's coming to fuckin' kill you? Listen to the vocals over the slams in "Facial Carvings", "Hacksaw Spinal Butchery" or "Rotted Divinity", close your eyes, and use your imagination... you'll see what I mean. Undoubtedly, Rob Weber's vocals is what makes Enmity Enmity.

My complaints are few. Most notably is that aside from "Intro" and "Severe Lacerations", neither of which are death metal songs, every track begins in the same manner. Every single song starts blasting and gurgling as soon as you press play. This is vexing, as the songwriting is quite solid elsewhere. It's just that none of the songs introduce themselves in a memorable fashion. The track "Intro" could have been dispensed with entirely. While not a terrible little cacophony, it has no call to be on the album, since the atmosphere is there without it. I'm not sure how I feel about "Severe Lacerations", nor do I know why a flamenco piece was tacked onto this album in the first place. It's a pretty composition and it's played well, but I get the suspicion that its existence is merely a means to wink at the listener, so to speak, saying "we could do this if we wanted to". If that's the case, then it absolutely qualifies as showing off, and such is contradictory to the album's motif. It's not too big a deal, though.

For me, Illuminations of Vile Engorgement isn't just another death metal album, it's an album that represents death metal the way it's meant to be. This is the music I love, made the way I want it. Sadly, there isn't a lot of this about anymore, for many contemporary death metal acts simply thrive on their brutality and/or musicianship whilst forgetting the key ingredient to the genre: Hatred. This is a band that has it down, and Enmity does well to live up to the definition of their name. I don't fuck around and I don't mince words, Illuminations of Vile Engorgement is a death metal masterpiece.