#profound lore

A significant portion of contemporary death/doom has emphasized the subgenre’s yuck factor, producing music that evokes the action of disease-afflicted peristalsis, or of sulfide bubbles burbling up through decomposing flesh; see recent records by bands like Ossuary, Mortiferum and Convocation. By contrast Innumerable Forms foregrounds the doomy elements of the sound, seeking grander spaces and somewhat more ennobling textures. Somewhat — while the music has an exciting, expansive quality, the situations the songs describe remain deeply unpleasant. On “Blotted Inside,” one of the best songs on Pain Effulgence, DeTore growls, “Trial of the heathen / Heretic banished to darkness / Betrayed by thirst / And the grandeur of light.”

It feels ponderous in pretty much every sense of the word. Whatever allegorical significance the lyrics carry is obscured by DeTore’s throaty vocals and by the hyperbole of the symbols themselves. As is most often the case with death/doom, the musicality and tone say it better and more directly. But the idea of being “betrayed by…light” has some metaphorical teeth. If light connotes reason and understanding, the song’s sentiment accords with the pessimism and negations strongly associated with death metal. To be sure, as a culture we are often collectively betrayed by institutions’ cynical perversions of reason and order. Heresy is preferable, whatever the cost.

In the narrative posed by “Blotted Inside,” that cost appears to be “banish[ment] to darkness.” That’s death/doom’s home turf, gravid and gruesome. But the music still attempts to tell us something, and that may explain some of the stakes of the record’s (and one of its songs’) title. Pain occurs inside, frequently hidden beneath the skin. But as a symptom, pain communicates; it attempts to bring something to light, to “effulgence,” to use the more florid term the band has chosen. Innumerable Forms’ music radiates the complex of feeling described above. On the aptly titled “Impulse,” DeTore sings (or vocalizes), “Enslaved in mind / Reasoning dies / Impulse insane / Reborn in rage.”

This reviewer vibes with that. There’s little evidence of human reason operating reasonably in the current conjuncture, and the resulting distortions can turn inward with insidious ideological force. You can find yourself nodding when someone tells you, “We have to learn to use AI ethically.” That’s insane. Better to follow your impulses: rage may not be an ethical or socially constructive feeling, but it’s honest. So is the music of Innumerable Forms. Bludgeoning, harrowing and grim, but direct and without prevarication. Pain Effulgence is a very good record. It won’t make you feel better, but after a few spins, you may find yourself enjoying your symptoms.

This reviewer enjoys the record’s sonic qualities, on their own merits. The strains of synths that rise deep in the mix of “Incarnate” and the somewhat more melodic riffage toward the middle of “Revenge” suggest Kontusion’s ability to endow the music’s cavernous, caveman appeal with something akin to nuance, if that word is at all meaningful in relation to sounds this aggro and pulverizing. This new record is a good deal more produced than the terrific demo the band released a couple years ago; but that development is relative to the songs’ intrinsic interest in thick, repulsive textures and aural violence.

Adding to the increased legibility of Insatiable Lust for Death is the inclusion of a lyric sheet. Some of the words are standard death metal fare, seemingly gleeful in their murderousness (from “Incarnate”: “Desolate in the cover of night / Captured, disemboweled / Mutilated / Beyond recognition”); but others suggest a politics, or at least a sort of ethical stance toward the wanton bloodshed (from “Throne of Skulls”: “All war in the name of gold / Violent minds of hate stay cold”; and from “Endless Horror”: “Child burning / Bodies piling / Who will profit?”). Of course, one might ask, if the words are important to the music’s message, shouldn’t you be able to discern them?

Kontusion’s faith to death metal traditions results in the conventional growls and throaty howls. It’s also clear that the players are very much enjoying their engagement with those traditions. Mark Bronzino and Chris Moore have played in other metal and metal-adjacent bands, most notably Mammoth Grinder and Repulsion. Both men have also played in more didactically political hardcore outfits (Coke Bust, Iron Reagan), which may explain the socially conscious edge of some of the songs on Insatiable Lust for Death. But only some. “Horrid Eye” and “No Escape” toggle back and forth between disgust and excitement—a vertiginous space that allows for no moral coherence. And only the most determinedly distorted readings of “Revenge” or “Incarnate” can discover anything but titillation at the bloody phenomena the tunes describe.

In some essential ways, opening strange and gruesomely unpleasant experiential spaces is what the best death metal has always done. Those early Carcass records, newer bands like Cosmic Putrefaction, pretty much everything Vastum has ever recorded—the music’s perverse aesthetics are interesting, stimulating, at their most effective thrilling. Kontusion makes a simpler, more muscular variety of sound, suggesting a complementary simplicity and directness in the themes they write about. But there is never anything simple about aestheticized violence, and when political authority’s compulsory force cloaks itself primarily in aesthetics (for instance, at the Nuremberg Rallies, or in all the paramilitary cosplay our current Secretary of Homeland Security seems to love), culture should pay attention.

This reviewer should be clear: Insatiable Lust of Death is a good and interesting death metal record, and underground metal’s capacity to intervene in culture is limited, to begin with. But some folks listen very, very closely. What is the culture telling them?