Originally written by Dean Brown.
“The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race” –Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (1789).
There is something rotting beneath the recession riddled exterior of modern day Ireland. As the population falls below the poverty line and either rolls over and dies or desperately flees this barely buoyant land, Eire thrives as a breeding ground for vile, misanthropic metal.
A new Irish band making wretched noise informed by its surroundings is Dublin’s Malthusian. Described by guitarist AC as “pernicious, hallucinogenic black death doom featuring members of Wreck of the Hesperus, Altar of Plagues, Mourning Beloveth, and On Pain of Death,” the band’s demo will be available through Invictus Productions (Slutvomit, ZOM, Tribulation) on the 23rd of November, 2013.
Malthusian is named after Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus’s 1789 theory on the control and reduction of population to sustainable levels through preventive checks such as abstinence (yeah right!) and more nefarious (more metal) reduction methods like starvation, disease, war, etc. According to AC, the name is an appropriate fit given the band’s lyrical stance – and presumably the paralyzing realities affecting the lives of its creators: “The whole Malthusian theory is pretty evocative and has fed into the lyrics, so a sense of nature’s revenge, disease, famine and death is emblematic of the band’s mission,” he explains over at Invictus’s official website.
This four piece’s first mission is a three song demo plainly titled, “Demo MMXIII,” which was recorded at Dublin’s Sun Studios by Ola Erjsfjord (Dread Sovereign). As you can hear from the demo’s final track, “Hallucinogen,” the world is a more destructive place with this entity in it. “Hallucinogen” twists itself into various forms across five and half minutes: beginning with a barrage of blastbeats and ending with an abyss-opening lurch of opaque doom, with a series of torturous riffs and rhythms in between. It takes on the surreal horror and blackened death of Antediluvian and Portal and slathers this in blood-curdling shrieks and bellows; serving as a poisonous taste of what Malthusian is capable of.
Appearing to be just as cruel and unrepentant, both musically and lyrically, as Dragged Into Sunlight did on its 2009 full-length debut, Hatred for Mankind, Malthusian’s grip on extreme metal is frightening this early on. Join this sect now and avoid the need to lie about being a fan of Malthusian’s first demo when the wider metal underground starts spouting this band’s wicked worth.
Embrace pessimism and inhumanity. Embrace the premature death…
