Dysentery – Dejection Chrysalis Review

[Artwork by Hidris]

There’s something to embracing simplicity. In a style demanding an arms race toward an endgame of mutually assured absurdity, Dysentery, on Dejection Chrysalis, the band’s newest LP and first excretion in 10 years, has undertaken relative asceticism. The 23-year-old slam quartet from Waltham, Massachusetts, abstains from gaudier pleasures and vices on its fourth full-length. There are no silly samples, ransacked non-metal aesthetics, or TikTok-baiting mosh calls. Heck, there are only three guest vocalists, which, in this era of slam, is like renting out a soccer stadium for your BFFs. So, without being cut with the fentanyl-esque additives that make a lot of modern slam go, Dejection Chrysalis, on first listen, sounds downright dry. Parched. But that dryness means these 10 songs have a chance to grow on you. Dysentery is no one-and-done; repeat listens of its chugs actually hold value better than whatever fly-by-night AI venture is currently ensorcelling credulous rich doofuses and their middle managers. That is to say, yes, believe it or not, Dejection Chrysalis is a slam album without an expiration date that will live to see the dawn.

Dysentery opens the proceedings with the beatdown greeting of “Transference,” which is notable for being titled after a concept in Freudian psychoanalysis rather than, say, some meme with the shelf life of a fruit fly’s midlife crisis. In fact, all of these song titles are like inviting a Mensa member to a mud wrestling contest — “Enslavement for the Obedient, Agony for the Wayward,” “Exhausted Bliss of Self Loathing,” “Transposed Benevolence.” And, in that respect, “Transference” is like a skeleton key that unlocks the rest of Dejection Chrysalis, because, under the veneer of intelligence, my god, are these riffs stupendously lizard brain. Guitarist Peter “Blue” Spinazola’s da-dun-duns charge with the uninhibited ire of a challenged bull. Bassist John Cook and drummer Eric Taranto underline slams with the force and fury of a fed-up teacher reading their 100th terrible term paper. Indeed, a lot of these tracks mirror those moments when you’re locked into a fit of pique, those runaway-train impulses when you can hear the voice in your head telling you “don’t do it,” but you still smash the “obliterate” button anyway. It’s a fist through drywall. It’s a flashing high beam straight into the eyes of a fast lane slowpoke. It’s an out-of-body objection in the middle of a staff meeting that sets up a date with human resources. It’s a release of the pressure valve of pent-up aggression via chugs and juds, and, musically, that’s a feeling one might more readily associate with hardcore.

“Well, being a band based out of the Boston area, and having most of us grow up in the area, we have always had heavy exposure to a lot of hardcore,” Spinazola told Guttural Death in 2013. “In the band’s music, I would absolutely say that All Out War has [a] massive influence on our style of beatdown; though currently Xibalba and No Zodiac have been completely inspiring us to get more and more ignorant with our heaviness.”

Ah, All Out War, a band that, at the brink of a burgeoning age of melo-addled, weakling, NWOAHM horseshit, asked and answered, “What if we just Slayer’d the hell out of metallic hardcore?” Those early records, such as 1998’s For Those Who Were Crucified, still hold up because the riffs rip, the members go hard, and there’s nothing really dating it to the ’90s hardcore movement beyond it sounding vaguely like Integrity, which is fine because that band was bedrock before metalcore strayed from God’s light. All Out War is just its active ingredients, distilled down to the good stuff, and, in its comparatively spartan presentation, is therefore the Levi’s 501 jeans of its respective niche; something that withstands the erosion of cultural epochs thanks to its classicism.

It makes sense, then, that those New Yorkers are Dysentery’s North Star. Both show up at the fancy dress party wearing t-shirts and jeans. And, again, there’s a timelessness in that. Kind of like how high fashion is a practical joke we play on the rich, because they look ridiculous in a nanosecond, the absence of frills du jour is like mothballs guarding against the egg-laying scourges of cringe. Dejection Chrysalis could’ve been recorded in 1998. It might be a transmission beamed back to our present by slam aficionados in 3098. It adheres to the purity of a slam ideal, provided you believe slam has the mental capacity to retain any semblance of self. The simplicity of that slam ideal, that riffs should da-dun-dun in a magical way that makes you want to deadlift a Ford Ranger, lasts because it’s as elemental as swinging a club in order to ensure survival. It’s embedded in the DNA; everything else is superfluous. Everything else is window dressing. But here’s the thing: Because Dejection Chrysalis lacks window dressing, Dysentery has to work hard to make sure its slam hits because there’s nothing else to hide behind.

Dysentery mostly succeeds. Mostly. The first three tracks — “Enslavement for the Obedient, Agony for the Wayward,” “Indignation Unravels,” and “Exhausted Bliss of Self Loathing” — are the strongest slammers on Dejection Chrysalis, with the third containing guest growls from Defeated Sanity’s Josh Welshman. The songs are about what you’d expect: a melange of hearty grooves, pinch harmonic [Danny Nelson voice] we-woos, and crowdkill breakdowns. Singer Scott Savaria is especially strong as a steadying presence — a landmark for the listener to consistently key in on. And there’s a nice bit of tempo variation, with Dysentery even occasionally stomping the gas pedal, much like a sadistic Uber driver, to keep you engaged. Dejection Chrysalis is well-executed. It’s good — above replacement level. It doesn’t waste your time.

Where Dysentery falls short is memorability. There isn’t a slam that reprograms your internal rhythms for weeks on end, that one riff that wiggles its way into your brain, stages a coup of your pleasure centers, and seizes the means of your serotonin production until you can hear that riff again. Consequently, Dejection Chrysalis‘s 29 minutes run together. Repetition helps differentiate songs, but we’re talking double-digit spins to properly uncover unique identifiers. Sure, the fact that the album can rack up the replays without the onset of slam fatigue is really something. We shouldn’t lose sight of that; it’s a one percent superpower in a style that’s 99 percent chuckleheads. Still, you wish there was a world-ending groove that Dysentery could hang its hat on, that one moment that pays everything off, that rush-to-the-pit riff.

Without that riff, Dejection Chrysalis settles best into a utility role, a sixth-man fill-in if an Internal Bleeding or Devourment needs to come out of the starting lineup for a breather. Dysentery will be the best spotter you’ll have in the gym. It will offer jolts of energy during soul-deadening chores, like if Marie Kondo could do gutturals. It will get you from point A to point B enjoyably, and with only a slightly elevated risk of vehicular manslaughter. But Dejection Chrysalis lacks those moments of transcendence, those lightning bolts of brutality that make you believe that a unifying truth exists within stupid riffs. It doesn’t quite achieve the fine low art of a slam classic. No, it’s an album that’s routinely solid, but its strength is acting as a splash of seasoning; it doesn’t wow on its own, but it makes what’s happening around it better. Be that as it may, the fact that it will always be there for you when duty calls and it needs to make something better is, once more, something. Dejection Chrysalis won’t expire. After all, simplicity can go a long, long way.