It’s never surprising to find out that a particularly nasty style of music comes from a seemingly less-than-nasty kind of place, but it never stops being amusing and satisfying. Such is the case with Dipygus (don’t Google it), who are from Monterey Bay, California of all places. Because even the land of beautiful Pacific shores and such “high class” establishments as Pebble Beach Golf Links can produce bands as putrid as this one.
The grind aspects are admittedly minor, and mostly only creep in when the album gets blasty, but there’s still this sense that everything is covered in some layer of rancid froth. The natural but chunked up production absolutely aids this, as does the fact that the band’s focus seems to be in the slower moments, and it is in the slower moments where they most excel. “St. Augustine, FL 1896” (do Google that), for example, might start in blastier mode and settle into a simple, mid-tempo bounce for much of its opening passages, but it’s the descent into trudge that will hook you. A song like “Osteodontokeratic Savagery” works in an opposite manner, beginning with the kind of uber heft that really only comes from doom/death of a certain type but eventually ending up back in that splattery drive. It even features the kind of effectively wild solo you get when a maniacal cat comes into contact with a whammy bar.
You could make an argument that Bushmeat overstays its welcome just a tad—even at only 37 minutes, the formula becomes fairly predictable by the end. But you could also make a pretty serious “who cares?” rebuttal to such an argument, because hot damn, this kind of ill-mannered throwback is so much fun. Besides, just because you can see the tempo and stylistic changes coming doesn’t mean Dipygus is doing anything wrong. If anything, it means they’ve honed their old school attack in such a way that their target audience is super keyed into the filth they’re peddling. You’ve heard it before, sure, but you’re hearing it done right again.
Even if timelessly nasty metal comes from everywhere, there’s still something extra sweet when it emerges from relatively unexpected places. Bands like Dipygus should get added to tourism websites not necessarily as a way to attract the usual visitors to their idyllic beach communities, but merely as a simple reminder:
We are everywhere.