Verminiscence
Out 28th July on Xenoglossy
Des Seraphins en Hybris
Out 28th July on Xenoglossy
Riff salad is a legacy term that sometimes gets thrown into conversation, and like much music criticism terminology, it tends to engender utter confusion. So for clarity, it’s usually deployed to refer to death metal (and occasionally thrash) of the more complex, one might say progressive variety (although not exclusively), to denote that although a band are not short on ideas and ability, they have conducted little in the way of meta analysis on their work. There’s no overarching purpose, no overriding intelligence directing all this surplus information to some higher end.
The obvious problem with this position is uncovering who or how we are to judge what constitutes a “higher end”. One person’s riff salad is another person’s prog metal drug of choice. Latter day Death is an instructive benchmark here. Their progressive turn is almost universally revered (almost), but beneath the noise of an overly exuberant fandom and perhaps extravagantly lavish praise, there is little to recommend prog era Death beyond a series of progressive vignettes, clever ideas and sleights of hand that – when taken together – amount to little more than ornate wallpaper.
Superficially, Gorguts circa ‘Obscura’ and ‘From Wisdom to Hate’ by contrast may look like a far more fitting candidate for a riff salad par excellence. But Lemay’s uniquely percussive approach to riffing, his idiosyncratic treatment of dissonance, the malformed melodies covertly smuggled in under tonal ambiguity, all construct fascinating emergent commentary on what is – ontologically speaking – music ultimately driven by internal anomie.
These competing conceptions of the riff salad haunt the framing of technical death metal to this day, at least the variety not driven by the modernist brutalism of the Suffocation school. And thus is the mindset with which we approach Guterus’s latest EPs now released on Xenoglossy in physical form.
This Moroccan outfit bears hallmarks from both schools of thought. The rigid percussivism of Gorguts is interrupted by the jazz informed meanderings of later Death. What’s perhaps most interesting about the latter is the fact that these elements still embody the aesthetics of 80s lounge jazz. The crisp bass tones, synth shaped guitar lines, and complex but not alienating melodic progressions defining the breakdowns call to mind a form of cocktail bar pop that could not be further away from the dissonant noise metal making up the bulk of these pieces. Whilst hardly unique in playing out this enduring hangover of progressive death metal, Guterus remain an interesting continuation of this stylistic eccentricity.
Elements of jagged industrial metal, the new wave of dissonant black metal, even djent at one point, all are marshalled toward a disorientating but still followable rendering of combative prog metal. Through faltering tempos, a welcome manipulation of dynamic exchanges, clashing of clean and distorted timbres, and the requisite complexity of key and rhythm, Guterus manage to embody many of the best facets of progressive death metal, whilst flirting with some of its most obnoxious modern traits, brass section and all.
The result is music that, for all its material complexity, seems unsure of whether it wants to ingratiate itself to the listener. This is not an uncommon trait within more technical extreme metal. Caught between the twin demands of presenting an overwhelming wash of noise, aggression, and apocalypticism whilst creating room to showcase technical ability, and somehow packaging this into an artefact that a given micro audience might regard as sellable, it’s no surprise this music’s regard for its listening audience remains ambiguous at times.
But Guterus navigate this fraught territory with more dignity than most. The love hate relationship these EPs force your ears into an experience that constantly refreshes itself whilst retaining that all important macro context, a clear if left-field approach to guiding the listener through the multifaceted corridors and junctions of a sonic hall of mirrors. A landscape that remains in constant flux whilst maintaining a linear if abstract sense of self throughout, always grounded in a context no matter how far the flights of fancy drag us off course.
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