Vomitrot - “Emetic Imprecations

Vomitrot is a Swedish death metal band who formed in 2019.  Their latest release “Emetic Imprecations,” is their second album; they also released a demo in 2020.

Based on the band’s name, artwork, promo photos and the song titles, I was fully prepared for “Emetic Imprecations,” to be absolutely insane.    I don’t think I truly could have ever been prepared for the special type of carnage that exists within this blistering six track, 26 minute long album.

A lot of death metal is brutal, unnerving or abrasive.  Vomitrot offers that…plus nonstop insanity and a 100% uncompromising take against what constitutes good taste.  Does that sound like something you would like?  Hell yes, it does.  If not, why are you reading this review?  Go get some taste and come back to see me later.  

That is, if I’m still alive.  If anything is going to kill me, if I am indeed going to be found a dead and bloated corpse wearing headphones, it will be because I didn’t survive this album.   Even for death metal, this album is extreme to degrees that is hard to achieve

The most impressive aspect of the album is the band’s ability to make their songs sound like impenetrable walls of sound–distorted noises that are the audio equivalent of the screams of the damned.  But despite how invasive and encompassing their songs are, they don’t sound muddled or messy— this is rabid brutality that is still precise in how and where it stabs you to death. 

Each of the six songs offers a moment of pure disgusting, archaic passages that would make anyone not accustomed to death metal cry in the corner.  It’s almost as if as they were writing the album the band said, “How can the next song be even more sick?”  Hell, maybe that is exactly what they did. 

“Envomited,” opens with the sound of, what else, retching before it vomits forth with oppressive, hellish drums.  The riffs seem to be trying to outrun the rest of the song but everyone stays together, led by the truly depraved death growls.  Around the 2:00 minute mark the band doubles down on their sound that was already amplified above most other death metal.  A massive bass drop breaks up the song briefly before it falls down the rabbit hole, beaten to death the entire way down.

If a person was shredded on a giant cheese grater, while alive mind you, what exactly what that sound like?  Probably like the guitar beginning at the 1:30 mark on “Emtophilic Cro-Magnon.”  After being shredded alive, how about being crushed into pulp?  Yep that’s the part that follows immediately after with the mid paced riffs and barking vocals hitting like wave after wave.

I really like it when the songs stop to breathe and take a slower or mid-paced approach such as on “Odious Fetid Aberrations.”  Although it opens viciously, there are moments intertwined that offer rhythmic groove or a steady crunch.  It works wonders because not only are these moments pulverizing but they make the faster tempos sound even better. 

It might come as a shock but there are even some catchy moments to be found.  The opening riffs on “Heinous Sulphuric Phlegm,” will get stuck in your head even if it's just there to fester and rot.  The music on this song is so deep and dense…it almost doesn’t even seem real.  Is this a fever dream, does music this heavy really exist?  Yes, yes it it does.  The crashing drums after the halfway mark light up the music like bombs dropping but the slowing down of the song near the ending pushes the song into new sonic territories. 

A dizzying array of guitar and bass hurtle “Gomorrahian Excrement,” forward like a giant casting a stone.  It gains momentum as it gets through whatever is in its way and shakes the very earth when it drops at the 1:18 mark.  Although the same could certainly be said on its presentation in the previous songs, the bass is truly special.  Oftentimes bass is ignored as the extremity grows more violent but not here. 

The final song, “Vomitous Execrations,” is just FILTHY.  It’s vile, wrong, and exactly what the death metal world needs right now.  There isn’t any widdly wham, ambient passages, expansive soundscapes….just fucked up dudes playing fucked up music.   The song goes on for over six minutes but never gets old, each passing minute offering a new death.  

Vomitrot’s “Emetic Imprecations,” is easily among the most caustic and underground death metal albums I’ve heard in this second half of the year.  Can it get heavier than this?  If it does, I’m not sure if the world, or my ears, will survive.