Consume the Forsaken and the Bastardization of Brutal Death Metal

Brutal death metal, one of the many death metal subgenres that is consistently trashed by “purists” just like genre siblings melodic death metal and technical death metal. Among the critiques are that it is just aesthetic masturbation, the techniques are too comical, and the classic generalization of “riff salad”. Despite being cliche, many of these comments are in a way, true, but it was not always like that. The first wave of brutal death metal showed great promise when bands used these bizarre and overblown techniques to branch out the already vast genre of death metal rather than as a crutch for lacklustre music. Classic bands such as Suffocation, Deeds of Flesh, and Cryptopsy, all used these extreme techniques and forged their own identities with them, and even bands that just rode the waves of these more successful bands still had a level of songwriting that one could appreciate (e.g. Inveracity). If you were to just look at the bands of old, you’d imagine that brutal death metal wasn’t just a joke genre of shock and disgust, but a new frontier, a downpour in the quickly evaporating pool of quality death metal in the late 90s and early 00s period. Instead, we got NES sound effect melodies, meme slam, and bands whose songs are as binary in their emotional depth as much as they are binary in tabs of their riffs. Where did it all go wrong?

One particular album I would like to point towards for helping to start this wave of monotonous brutality would be Disgorge’s Consume the Forsaken, an album that bridges the gap between the era of old school brutal death metal and modern brutal death metal. Disgorge were a band that initially had hopped on the Suffocation train of dense eight note strings of riffs interspersed with heavy chugs, albeit a bit more focused on the slams, especially with their first two releases. They later built their sound into the template of modern brutal death metal with Consume the Forsaken, an album that strips the nuances of Disgorge’s previous output and goes for straight unrelenting brutality throughout. Some contemporaries had stuck their toes in the water with this sound, Malignancy, for example, had played with this level of extreme technique in their releases Intrauterine Cannibalism and Motivated by Hunger, both released a couple years before Consume the Forsaken. What separates Malignancy is that instead of merely speeding up Suffocation riffs to incomprehensible speeds while forgoing the compositional prestige of Suffocation, Malignancy’s extremity helps to pave a new path through writings riffs that are catchy in spite of their uncompromising dissonance and rhythm. Although this means contemporary bands might’ve had some influence over the wave of mediocre bands following, Disgorge’s display of pure creative apathy hits right at the mark for the album that succinctly represents this change in death metal.

The album itself on the surface isn’t much different from their first two, in fact it is a step above in a couple of ways. The production is pristine and crushing, leagues above the muddy mess of Cranial Impalement and the dry and brittle She Lay Gutted. The playing is precise and it is clear that the band has upped their chops for this album. That is where the positives begin to wane. What Cranial Impalement and She Lay Gutted had in rhythmic diversity and the occasional catchy melody is now stripped to atonal palm muted runs and chromatic slamming throughout the album’s entirety. The album runs on two modes, blasturbation, and boneheaded slam. This barbaric approach certainly ups the brutality factor, but at what cost? The album is bereft of memorable moments, and times when they do bring back riffs (very scarcely), admittedly in interesting ways, it isn’t effective as it just sounds like all the other riffs among the barrage of deadpan chugs. The songs therefore do not contain any emotional narrative and the album functions rather like a noise album, aggression for the sake of aggression. When the album does finally deliver a riff outside of its narrow boundaries, it feels like a great relief, which had initially tricked me into thinking the album was good, but this is death metal, not Godspeed You! Black Emperor or latter era Swans. A minute of greatness doesn’t make up for 10 minutes of boredom. And that’s really what makes this album disappointing, there is that potential for Disgorge to create more unique death metal and it is sometimes shown, but these unique moments are little “rewards” you get for waiting in aural timeout. Through Disgorge’s focus on unadulterated brutality, they forget how songs are supposed to feel and just turn what a could-be heavy moment into directionless aggression.

Now, despite my criticisms of this album, I do not possess very negative feelings towards it musically, it can actually be a good bit of mindless aggression a la War.Cult.Supremacy, but its influence is what I have issues with. An album like this should just be a singularity in the genre, one and done experiment of “what’s the most brutal music you can make”, not be a prototype for many future bands. That is what happens with albums like this or the previously mentioned War.Cult.Supremacy, they are monoliths of their respective genres because of their willingness to sacrifice the music for ferocity, but instead of audiences accepting their enigmatic natures, they try to hone the sounds themselves and it stagnates the genre. The Colombian scene in particular tries to emulate this sound through unceasing blasts, inhumane gurgles, and jarring breakdowns, but that’s what the music is reduced to in the end. Hear an album like Suppuration’s Pain and Suffering, it possesses all the ultra-violent trademarks of this style of music, and it suffers for it. There’s rarely a discernable riff and they play rhythm like they have Parkinson’s. Like the phenomenon of music’s loudness wars, you get the short term satisfaction of making a sound huge and crushing, but through the sacrificing of dynamics, the quality becomes illusory.

Their influence on modern brutal death metal is observable, but can you even blame them too much for this? Consider this: can we blame Incantation for inspiring the new wave of generic cavernous death metal? The answer should of course be no. The truth is, there will always be people who will distil sounds to a hollow shell, a sum of tropes and trends. I would be in denial to say that even in the classic era we didn’t have our occasional dud, see Massacre. There will always be the risk with bands that experiment and end up creating a sound that oversaturates the scene, and that is what Disgorge did with this album, they pulled a risk. They made the most uncompromisingly brutal album, and unknowingly paved the way for many bands after, and in that way you can appreciate them quite a bit more than most. It is just the cold truth that many people don’t have the creative initiative to experiment, and would rather ride off other bands. The quality of the bands they take from are irrelevant, because Father Befouled, who copies a great band like incantation, is still about as respectable as Suppuration who rides off the mediocre Consume the Forsaken.

Overall, Consume the Forsaken is a quite mediocre album, not the worst, but its influence and what it represents is worth considering when looking at the landscape of brutal death metal. It was one of the many players in the stagnation of the genre, and represents a shift towards a less musical and more apathetic style. There is still worthwhile music coming out of this ostensible landfill of a genre, carrying the torch of innovation, and the genre should not be wholly dismissed because of the plentiful clones and joke bands it has produced.