The Grand Descent

Nowadays in the modern landscape of hardcore trying to fuck the shit out of death metal, there's only so many ways that a band can really differentiate themselves from the rest of the (honestly lackluster) landscape of OSDM/revival. Vocalist and guitarist, Mark Whelan provides us with 30 minutes of dark, brittle, and tortured death metal. HM-2 breakdowns galore, schizophrenically heavy vocals, Cayle Sain's (RIP) aggressive and detailed drumming, knuckle dragging song structures, all of which combined together creates what could be one of the biggest standouts in modern death metal. This album does have its faults like most other albums in this genre though, not to discredit it by any means but pure aggression can start to become redundant after a certain spam of time.

The most glaringly obvious thing when this record first opens up is the Entombed inspiration, everything from the logo on the album art (which was done by the legendary Mariusz Lewandowski) all the way to the guitar tone, with the use of the HM-2. The opening number "Fatalism" begins in a blaze, with no time to waste the album kicks into 150mph, it's pure cutthroat carnage straight into every vital organ in the human body, and then some. The vocals aren't so guttural to be blended in with the instruments, but they aren't mean to be like some lovechild of deathcore, Mark has an extremely paranoid cadence to his vocals, only increasing the intensity as the records plummets downward to hell. Lines like "Why the fuck do I have to suffer" and "Time disintegrates, the hourglass breaks, the spectrum permeates" are delivered with such immediacy, that they can make up for the admittedly "one note" nature of the writing.

Songs like "Burning Hand", and "Dead Asleep", achieve longer track-lengths without feeling padded or dumbed down in any capacity and keeping the record at a frantic but controlled pace. The record is fairly organized well for being so loud and cathartic. Running through this record all the way through never feels like a drag or an insult to the listener's intelligence. They may not be very technical, or even interesting in some cases, but the guitars sound like chainsaws piercing through steel and bone, so that makes up for it.

The only real negative to this album is if you aren't a fan of this new age of death metal, you'll probably lose interest before the first 10 minutes are over. The record really only drifts off the grid during the track "Distant Voice" which is a 2 minute interlude with whispered vocals and the sound of cold, dark air in it's presence. For those who enjoy lots of variety in their records, this one will more often than not, grow old fast for those types of listeners. A good chunk of the riffs are very similar and the vocals rarely utilize variation, for most, blast beat laden grindy death riff-fests can only go on for so long before they lose their identity.

Overall, Fuming Mouth may not be the most original, or genre defying band in death metal, but they indubitably do it better than 99% of other bands in their league. The Grand Descent may be the farthest in hell we'll ever get, some may want to go farther, some want to stay far far away from it's purgatory.

Standouts:
Out of the Shadows
Burning Hand
Dead Asleep
Half Life (bonus track)

I gotta give Fuming Mouth credit, they have me figured out. I came across this CD in a store, saw the art and immediately knew it was the same guy who did the Bell Witch album art, checked the genre on metal-archives, bought it without hesitation. This has all of the surface appeal I could possibly want, and to top it all off, the first blast through the speakers sounds a spunky lovechild of Xibalba and Gatecreeper. Hardcore flirting with OSDM worship is trendy nowadays, so Fuming Mouth picked the perfect time to put all their chips forward.

My first impression of this points to an album I’d be involuntarily cranking through my speakers for months until I could absolutely not tolerate it anymore...but instead, I have to force myself to listen to this. Swedeathcore is already a style that wows you on the first listen and cools down a bit over time, and sure enough, The Grand Descent is a reverse grower of the highest caliber. The first time I heard this I was amped up at the prospect of big, booming thug breakdowns with a crunchy guitar tone all day long, and the intensity rarely lets up (aside from the obligatory atmospheric diversions). The vocalist has a memorable and desperate presence to him that I really enjoy, and every now and then he can make a song worthwhile on his own. The riffs hit a nice mix that hasn't been explored too much in this sub-style, and on top of it all I’m on a big deathcrust kick right now. This should be one of my top 3 albums of 2019, but after a few listens I don’t think it’s even gonna make the list. It’s frustrating, because i’m trying to listen to this and enjoy it, and as you can probably tell there’s a lot of elements that I like, but something just isn’t clicking. It’s not that I don’t like the drumming, though. The hardcore-dominant style takes a bit of getting used to for my blastbeat-saturated ears, sure, but it still fits the riffs fine. Sometimes a little too closely, even, but again that’s just a product of hardcore’s more traditionally minimal sound.

When you get right down to it, the proof is always in the songwriting. Fuming Mouth have all the tools they need to carve their own little niche in a trending subgenre, but they don't put the LEGO blocks together in a way that forms a sturdy castle. Every now and then they build a tower of a couple of good riffs or have a nice drawbridge and moat in a song (“Nothing to Bleed” is good all the way through), like you can tell it would totally be a sick castle if it was 100% finished, but like many a childhood building project abandoned partway through, the songs on The Grand Descent generally feel incomplete and underdeveloped. There's good ideas, I just wish they stuck around for longer! Many of the songs only feature two motifs: fast, pummeling Swedeath and big, booming breakdowns (or midpaced hardcore instead of the Swedeath). Because of the thumping, cymbal-heavy breakdown beats with little to no syncopation, the slow parts often have a similar energy to the faster moments, which creates a lack of dynamics that more straightforward songwriting needs in order to thrive. It just ends up sounding like all release and no buildup, and try as you might (and believe me I’ve tried), you can’t just blow your load for thirty straight minutes. Even though Fuming Mouth has a lot of strengths, it’s clear they still haven’t figured out how to fully utilize them yet. With a bit more expansion on their sound and incorporating some more unusual ideas, I think this band could turn what is already a somewhat unique aesthetic into a genre-shaping force. Until then, consider The Grand Descent one of those albums that I’ll probably never listen to but still keep in my collection because it has really cool cover art.

PS: am I the only one that finds it weird that the drummer is in two projects, both with band names that are “strange verb + body part”?