Monday, October 9, 2017

Track Review: PENTHOS Bodily Shut Down

Bodily Shut Down
Taken from the "Lifeless Haze" cassette demo released by Visceral Circuitry records
For modern death-metal listeners who value their daily discoveries of underground rarities; one of the most frequent complaints is that a lot of the modern groups lack the ferocity and rawness of what the genre represented in yesteryear, and then of course there'll be a counteraction of "But you just haven't dug deep enough yet!” I can say, with all honesty, modern DM isn't one of my favourites but there's a real versatile old-school quality to what is lurking beneath the sound of PENTHOS. Their single 'Bodily Shut Down', although relatively short, is musically quite far removed from the conventional stylings of overwhelmingly fast blast-beats which often serve to lower one's adrenaline as opposed to heightening it. You would have to liken their style as analogous to early AUTOPSY, maybe TERRORIZER and definitely GODFLESH. There's a doom-esque sound to be detected in the group's array of influences although it's not conspicuous or transparent. The drums are metallic, the production is really appealing for those who are into classic 1980s-style DM and the vocals are unyieldingly guttural. Needless to say, I was personally impressed. -Jaime Regadas

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