Effluviatorium Du Jour

This is a bias review. Regardless, it needs to be written.

Stench Collector’s debut release was a much needed addition to death metal in New England. This project was spearheaded by Mark Pechak. I’m partial to his artistry because I was in a black metal band with him many years ago. Mark was a solid bassist and singer for that band. However, at our core, we just wanted to write punishing, old school death metal that teetered on slam. In fact, we were ramping up to do something new when my inability to be present for practices made things nearly impossible. Frankly, we also worked at very different speeds. I could articulate a concept and riffs pretty quickly. Mark often took his time. This is the thing I admired about him most. He slowed and appreciated the process of writing extreme music. He made you a more mindful musician.

Mark’s patience was omnipresent in his life. He was a teacher, a swim coach, and an undercover brutal death metal musician. All jokes aside, his patience and attention to detail are evident in this band’s debut release. If you passively listen to Effluviatorium Du Jour, it comes off as a “for fans off” OSDM release. Creepy album art, sick logo, drudgingly heavy riffs. Got it.

If you take the time to begin peeling back the layers of this deadly onion…you realize that the concept of this album goes further down. Below that basement where the stench collector is preparing pestilent dinners for his family that hangs on to the crumbling American fabric by a thread. Below this basement lies the very framework for this EP: societal collapse. It doesn’t surprise me that Mark chose a traditionally gory and gross album cover. I think he did that to hang on to some kind of element of old school death metal; to ensure that it reached the intended crowd. Mark, however, based his horror in reality.

Disgusted by what he described as rampant greed in capitalism, Mark shifted his focus onto a crumbling American society. And in these times we could see why this topic weighed on his mind. He had always focused on injustices. He found those to be the truest measure of brutality. In writing about these topics, he didn’t intend to virtue signal. He was not attempting to garner morality points from the scene kids. He wanted to engage in an artistic dialogue about what he deemed to be indicative of brutality. This was a common thread in all of Mark’s music. His other projects were Frontier, Desolate Wind, Putrid Goat, and Cats. In Frontier, those themes are very clear.

I intended to make this a review, but it’s also a musical eulogy. To summarize Stench Collector’s debut: it re-examined the current landscape of death metal. No longer are the scary monsters, of both fiction and non-fiction, the things that inspire true fear. The true horror lies in the current human experience. The drums on this EP are gut wrenching. They aren’t overly flashy, but capture the old school death metal vibe perfectly. Shawn is a masterful drummer, and it saddens me to say that you were all just getting to know his ability as a musician. He is a creative and passionate fast learner of all things metal. Whoever scoops him up as a drummer for their next project is very lucky. I could not speak higher of his musicianship.

The bass is what resonates with me the most when it comes to Mark. It’s his main instrument and he had such a profoundly deep knowledge of how to make his bass sound devastatingly heavy while also making it unique to him. The guitars in the project were executed masterfully. Mark wrote death metal sans frills. He wrote straight forward, hair whip inducing riffs. He was careful and sparse with his leads and the tone always teetered on something you’d hear on a Burning Witch album. One would have to be attuned to his initial love of doom and stoner metal to pick up on this. Those who knew Mark knew him to be a mere extension of his deliberately loud and carefully constructed stadium level amp rigs. He made a basement sound like a fucking arena.

Mark’s vocal delivery and aforementioned lyrical context shouldn’t be viewed as a “heady notion,” but rather a genuinely passionate attempt to bring death metal to new places. To evolve the conversation on what topics the genre can envelop. And this all stemmed from a deep passion and respect for the art form. A true artist aims higher than emulation or imitation. They aim to further the craft. In music history, when this is done, it is often ridiculed and met with resistance. But more often than not, it breaks through, and reaches another person thinking outside of the box. This is what Mark did when he wrote music. To know him was to know an unforgivingly honest human being. Mark never minced his words. He lived life on his own terms, just as the legendary metal heads always do.

I leave you with this:

There are many Marks in music communities throughout the world. Mark and I would always fight about some of the decisions he made that were often not the best for him. I’m glad I was able to argue with, and FOR this man. I, along with his true friends, wanted what was best for him. Keep having those conversations with your friends. It won’t make you popular, but it will keep you honest. Thank you to Shawn from Stench Collector, Tom from Cats, and any other of his band members that supported and loved him. Thank you to his parents for raising a crazy metal head that devoted himself to young people. And finally, thank you Mark. Thank you for being a great friend. For always talking through problems and disagreements. For your passion for music.

Life is long until it isn’t. Check on your friends.