Originally written by Erik Thomas.
Synopsis:
Man, it’s only July and 2008 might be one of the best years for death metal in recent memory, and England’s Detrimentum, while adding to this year’s bumper crop of excellent death metal, are, like Sarpanitum giving British death metal some measure of respect again.
Review:
In fact while listening to Embracing This Deformity I wondered why this wasn’t released on Leon Macy’s (Mithras) own Galactic Records label, along side Mithras, Sarpanitum, Scythian and such. But then I learned that Detrimentum (and former Gorerotted) drummer Jon Rushforth actually runs Grindethic Records.
Where Sarpanitum took Immolation’s sound and gave it their own character and energy, Detrimentum take the sound of older (Sylvain Houde era) Kataklysm as well as Cephalectomy; that’s to say highly orchestrated chaos with a surprising measure of melody amid the grinding and blasting vortex of complexity and brutality. Throw in a similar if deeper, busy vocal cadence and lyrical lean and you get a Sorcery sounding album of epic discord.
With ten lengthy tracks, Embracing This Deformity is a 51 minute album that is a tiny bit long for a death metal album, so your attention may wane slightly as the likes of “The Contusions Of Remorse” rolls out the albums back end, and that would be a shame as you’d miss the excellent closer “Twilight’s Slow Attrition”; simply a young band issue I reckon. However, the album’s early efforts like “Scales to Measure the Misfortune of Man” and the incredibly Kataklysm-ish standout “Disillusion Ethos (Of Torment and My Bleeding Shadow)”, “Blood Simple”, “Dark Eye”, churning “The Flesh Elemental” are absolutely riotous examples of measured chaos and complexity that rarely lets up. That being said, it’s not an Hour of Penance blast fest as there are lots of subtle time shifts and tangents that occur within songs that make you think there are tempo changes, but in reality it’s just a clever sonic mirage of carnage – just listen to other standout “Negativity Flux”. Production wise, things are a tad murky and things could be cleaner to let all the intricacy breath, but in the large picture, it all still works well and gives Detrimentum a little of their own character.
Ultimately, Detrimentum easily ranks up with Mithras, Man Must Die and Sarpanitum as the very elite of new UK death metal and Embracing This Deformity is one of 2008’s better death metal releases.
