Blast Rites: Moiscus – Idiomorphic Practices Review

It must be some serious pressure for a young band to pick exactly the perfect gross-out name, but this trio from Dayton, Ohio, has certainly pulled out an all-timer with a portmanteau of “moist” and “mucus.” Tell me that ain’t icky, and I’ll call you a liar.

What the name “Moiscus” also is a bit goofy, but that’s okay because the band Moiscus are themselves a bit goofy. That’s just one more part of their appeal.

This beautifully bright-green blast of bloody blasting is Moiscus’ fourth standalone effort (alongside a split with Putrid Liquid and Viral Isolation), and their first as a three-piece, having borrowed bassist Joey from Gross Load last year. More importantly, Idiomorphic Practices continues along the same trajectory of slimy heaviness as Oligophrenic Anthropoids and before, making it arguably the strongest Moiscus thusfar. Regardless of whether it tops Oligophrenic or merely matches it, Idiomorphic has dominated my listening time these past few weeks. Taking the low-gurgle grime of goregrind and layering it across a base of brutal death metal, Moiscus has found a perfect middle ground between the ignorant / slamtastic and the ignorant / vile. It’s ridiculous, and it’s addictive, and it comes with added emphasis on the “ick” in both cases.

Adam Witmer churns out chunky death / grind riffs, rife with pinch squeals, while Reegan Wenning blasts away beneath, a whirlwind of bashing punctuated frantically by a snare drum that’s tuned high enough that normally I’d complain, but here… it works. Punching through these tracks like a renegade popcorn popper, that snare drum becomes Moiscus’ lead instrument, the most immediate sonic hallmark of Idiomorphic’s brutal ooze. Below that, the guitars and bass roil, chopping and twisting in lockstep, topped with Adam’s indistinct belching gutturals. Syllables be damned, there are no phonetic sounds to be found in Moiscus’ swamp – merely the hot breath of decay as it blows over a blighted landscape. Tempos shift between manic grind and a more methodical swagger; riffs bubble up, flow through, are tossed away and left behind to rot, replaced with equally hefty bits of gnarled chord and squalling harmonics.

All of Idiomorphic’s ten tracks are built from similar parts, so it’s easy (and okay) to approach them as parts of the whole, sprinting bits of blistering tempo offset by palm-muted respites in the attack, and with repeated listens, riffs begin to float together from the mire, particularly in those slower moments: the thrashing of the wonderfully titled “The Ill-Considered Self-Righteousness Of The Insufferable”,” or the lumbering “Nasal Lube,” with its last-second bass-drop. Mostly, though, Moiscus brings you these things: a palpable sense of grossness, a goofball sense of humor that complements that grossness, a relentless pummeling brutality coated in that obvious sonic grime, and a coffee-can snare drum that will haunt your dreams when it all stops ringing…

And that’s more than enough.