DIPYGUS - Bushmeat CD
Is there a void in your life somewhere in between Cannibal Holocaust and Planet of the Apes? Did you ever think Impetigo wasn’t quite primitive enough lyrically? Well, Dipygus will probably hit pretty hard—and certainly does that anyway even completely ignoring their delightfully regressive aesthetic. Hailing from Northern California, these primordial pre-cavemen clearly have a hankering for the earliest days of gore and death from when Autopsy and Impetigo ruled the world, but do it their way; Bushmeat, their new album, is no lame rehash of Horror of the Zombies and more than rules on its own merits.
A defining feature of the band, far more than anything else, is the great sense of dynamics they have between repetitive pummeling sections, faster ones, doom and gloom, and even bringing in melody. Many lesser bands pidgeonhole themselves into a single set of tempos or moods, but Dipygus are happy to reach into speed, or trudging, or even into extended jam sessions that somehow work despite the genre (see: "Plasmoidal Mass"). Song flow is everything with this vein of groovy and downtuned death metal, and Dipygus for all their love of brain-optional riffs approach their songwriting very intelligently. There is never a section where a tempo feels like it carries on too long, a solo that comes in at the wrong time, or an unwanted vocal part. The drumming is always tasteful enough to carry forward a song, a fast break is always waiting after a long section of tasty Autopsy-style doom, and when the band’s love for samples comes in, they either keep them short or even play them over a riff, which admittedly is something that I’m a total sucker for.
Everything that I liked about the band’s debut, Deathooze, really solidifies with this one. Their songwriting and riffcrafting remain ironclad, the vocals are even better, and I love the extra lead guitar that’s developed over the last few years. Many bands taking a more rhythm-heavy and barbaric approach to death metal ignore lead guitar and melody, and though Dipygus would work without it, those evil leads and eerie harmonies that bounce in and out across the songs add another layer of delight. The vocal pacing is another real joy, consistently locking in nicely with the rhythm section to help push the songs. Most death metal vocalists in the current year aren’t adding anything to their band that another vocalist couldn’t, but the rhythmic grunting here has that special something that helps songs stick in the brain—another underrated trait in modern death metal, which often just is not catchy enough. Tied together with a boatload of disgusting hammering drum hits and a production job that’d make Pungent Stench sweaty, and you got yourself a stew, baby—a long pig one. - Invisible Oranges
Memento Mori
