Disembodiment – Spiral Crypts Review

By Steel Druhm

It’s been a minute since I got my iron claws stuck into some rancid, cesspool-grade death metal, and I was badly jonesing for some. Along comes Quebec-based filth-death crew Disembodiment with their Spiral Crypts debut, and they put Steel right back in the rot pit! Featuring a former member of Serpent Corpse, these canucks bring the seeping offal to the public toilets with nary an ounce of excrement left unsmeared. Spiral Crypts is disgusting caverncore awfulness for the caveman death setters, and you’ll feel the toxic grime and gunk accumulating in your pores before you get through the first song. It’s every bit the unnatural mating of Incantation with Autopsy and early Tomb Mold, with bits of Cannibal Corpse and Suffocation stuck in the soft serve like corn. But is an unapologetic scuzz-bucket puke product enough to sell a cynical deathhead on what Disembodiment is hawking? Let’s dive in!

The album opens appropriately with the sounds of something wet leaking somewhere sticky as flies buzz and a woman whimpers and screams in abject horror. Soon the band shows us why, as they kick the basement door in and proceed to put the “fist” in fistula on “Morbid Infestation.” It’s chuggy OSDM with enough scab and pus on the sound profile to put off all but the twisted. The tempos skew wildly from doomy, oppressive plods and blasty, thrash explosions that reek of the late 80s/early 90s death landmarks, and at times, little strains of vintage Death surface from the primordial ooze. It’s not reinventing the wheel, but it’s gumming up the rotors with lots of raw sewage. The riffs are spicy and interesting, and the vocals approximate an overworked garbage disposal trying to process an entire Christmas ham. It’s a shitshow, but one you can’t look away from. The band demonstrates a bit more range on “Stygian Overture,” playing with mood and tempo for a more expansive sound, making sure the rubber boot never comes too far off the trachea as they slow things down and showcase impressive riff-sense. What’s most entertaining is the way the band tries to be more “proggy” while the vocalist seems to devolve into something even less human.

My favorite moment comes on “Larval,” where all the maggots come home to roost. This one kicks off with an insanely heavy, utterly brainless chug stomp that will flatten your ass. Those chug grooves are heavy enough to decimate a concrete bunker, and you will feel yourself regress to your most apeish nature as you blast this one. While some tracks hit harder than others, none disappoint or leave you feeling clean and safe spacey. Every tune is infused with swampy but sharp riffing and enough tempo shifts to shake your IQ downward several points. At a very reasonable 30 minutes, Disembodiment know that too much of a rancid thing may lead to cesspool fatigue, so things go down the drain before you retch up any organs you might really need. The production is a master class in muck, crust, sleaze and revoltingness. The guitar tons is nasty as fook, and the bass is booming and oppressive. My only complaint is that there are skips in the master where it sounds like someone cut a few seconds of the song out entirely. It only happens a few times, but it’s weird and disruptive.

Mathieu Breton is credited as the lead voKillizer, and he does a convincing job of sounding like he’s hurling up the biggest, wettest loogey-woogey in the history of mankind. He’s perfectly vile and repellant, and I love everything he does. Guitarist Chris unleashes a vast collection of scathing, scouring riffs and makes Spiral Crypts an exceptionally riffy death metal platter. His style is heavily grounded in the Incantation / Autopsy school but he wanders into the realms of Death and Morbid Angel as well. He has a great handle on atmosphere and mood, and he can craft a creepy doom riff that makes you feel legitimately uneasy. This is a crew that knows how to snake a shitter.

Spiral Crypts is one of the those fucking disgusting OSDM albums you hear and love on the very first salvo, and it offers everything you could want from this unclean, unsanitary style. Disembodiment are now on my radar and I’m eager to hear what they dump on the floor next. Someone wise once said, in a world of shit, be the grossest turd in the bowl, That’s the Disembodiment way. Get your face in this crawlspace and huff deeply.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Everlasting Spew
Websites: facebook.com/disembodimentdeath | instagram.com/disembodimentdeath
Releases Worldwide: July 11th, 2025

#2025 #35 #Autopsy #CanadianMetal #DeathMetal #Disembodiment #EverlastingSpewRecords #Incantation #Jul25 #Review #SpiralCrypts #TombMold

Décryptal – Simulacre Review

By El Cuervo

Québec has long been a region synonymous with uncompromising death metal, with stacks of excellent bands bleeding from its fertile cemetery grounds. Débutants Décryptal emerge from said land, unveiling their first full-length entitled Simulacre after just one prior demo. This release arrives with the promise of a sound steeped in French Canada’s murky traditions, plundering tombs and raiding caverns alike. But in a scene so replete with bands treading the same territory, is Simulacre able to carve out its own grave?

Simulacre fits neatly – if powerfully – into the cavernous style of death metal, exemplifying the new school of the old school. In this way, Décryptal strongly recall Phrenelith. Everything about the album is bruising. From the burly guitar grooves to the battering drums, to the guttural growls, to the meaty production, it feels like proper death metal. It prioritizes fat rhythms above shredding melodies, with the chunky guitars, bass, and drums offering a thunderous accompaniment to everything that happens. And even if the riffs and performances already conveyed the sense of a pungent vaulted cave system, the production wraps all this into something pitch-black and haunting. I love how the rounded drums, thumping bass, and jagged guitar edges create a void of hope.

Besides the album’s overall aesthetic and the atmospheric production, it’s hard to argue that Simulacre’s strongest quality isn’t its guitar leads. The release is stuffed full of undeniable riffs. My highlight is the passage from 3:20 on “Horde d’Invertébrés” or “Dendrites.” I’m unclear which, because these two tracks are the same on my review copy, leaving me to assume that there’s also a corresponding track missing. In either case, the riff checks every box I want a death metal riff to check: groovy, meaty, driving, and headbangable. The guy who wrote it deserves to dine out on its quality for a substantial period. Likewise, the lead that commences at 1:10 on “Flétrissement” offers a compelling blend of bludgeoning brutality and scything sharpness. Though Décryptal like to smash more than they like to slice, they’re capable of swapping their hammers for knives when the situation demands it. And while things never descend into Incantation death/doom territory, the band also enjoys slowing the tempo into passages with thick, doomy leads (“Zisurru,” for example).

You may question where Simulacre falters. The songs are consistently good, but also feel like they are constituted from various great riffs haphazardly arranged. Décryptal don’t sound as if they were especially focused on meaningful, coherent song construction. You can hit play from anywhere throughout and immediately have fun, but you could also switch around many passages without feeling like much has changed. This undermines the album as a unique art form, intended as a deliberate arrangement of songs in a particular order. This is compounded by the songwriting, which is robust but predictable. There are no surprises here as everything is exactly what you expect it to be. Variety, or moments of true inspiration, are thin on the ground. Part of this sense that there’s little to truly stand out is that the shredding guitar solos are relatively buried compared with the punchy rhythms. I understand that the band is plumping for a thick, murky tone, but louder solos would help to break up the songs if they were mixed higher.

Dissecting Simulacre exposes a Décryptal that’s already brushing up against the bands that influence them; though it may not be as innovative or exciting as those bands once were, it’s a remarkably good execution of cavern-core death metal. While stylistically brutal, there’s no shortage of technicality; it’s just that the band rightly prioritizes power above showmanship. Simulacre isn’t perfect, but could be the start of a Very Good Thing.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps MP3
Label: Me Saco Un Ojo Records
Websites: decryptal.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/decryptal
Releases Worldwide: July 11th, 2025

#2025 #30 #CanadianMetal #DeathMetal #Décryptal #Incantation #Jul25 #Phrenelith #Review #Reviews #Simulacre