March 2022 Feature Release – The Horde Edition

So just like that we find that a new month is upon us which of course means that we’ll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we’re asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. We’re really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our chosen releases so don’t be shy.

This month’s feature release for The Horde has been nominated by Vinny. It's the 2015 third album "Hole Below" from doomy San Francisco-based death metal outfit Vastum.

https://metal.academy/releases/13541

This one really hits the spot for this old-school death metal fanboy Vinny. Vastum start with the dark & doomy atmosphere of Incantation (complete with similarly deep & cavernous vocals) & then throw in some high quality tremolo-picked riffs that remind me very much of Bolt Thrower & Grave. It all reeks of that classic graveyard vibe. The tracklisting is incredibly consistent however I do think there's a lack of genuine highlight tracks with all six inclusions falling a bit short of tier one status due to the odd flatter riff or bouncier beat. Still... I can't complain too much as this fucker is right up my alley for the most part, particularly when Vastum indulge in their doomier side.

4/5

This get's a massive thumbs-up from me too, Vinny. I've let it be known on several occasions that I struggle with a lot of death metal - brutal dm, slam death and tech-death all leave me a little bewildered to be honest. But honest-to-goodness, old-school, filthy-sounding death doom is a style I love at least as much as any other and a damn sight more than most. I love metal that creates tangible atmosphere but whereas atmo-black and atmospheric sludge tend to summon visions of vast, open spaces, the atmosphere of old school death doom is more cloying, sulphurous and subterranean. I think it would be cool to rename the genre Cthulhian Death Metal, as well as it being an extremely apt descriptor. The early nineties were undoubtedly the heyday of this type of death metal, but it never went away and there are still some great practitioners of the art such as Coffins, Atavisma and Totengott. To that list I must now add San Francisco's Vastum. Fifty-five years ago SF was at the epicentre of the hippy culture and the Summer of Love, but what the fuck those hippies would have made of an album like this emerging from their own back streets I can only imagine.

I enjoyed Vastum's 2019 Orificial Purge album very much, but it is the only one I had heard prior to this month's feature. Evidently that was no great departure from 2015's Hole Below, the subject of said feature. There is nothing new on offer here of course, downtuned death metal riffs that are periodically slowed to a seeping crawl that speaks of dank caves, miasmic fumes and unsettling growls that set the hairs on the back of your neck standing up. The chugging riffs of tracks like Amniosis or In Sickness and in Death are perfect headbanging material when the band up the tempo a little and I find myself unable to keep still when listening to these tracks! Daniel Butler's acrid growls are perfectly pitched to sound menacingly demonic, but not so deep or buried in the mix as to be indecipherable, which can sometime happen when bands are going for that really filthy sound. I would like them to have gone a bit more heavily into the doomy side of things if I was being especially picky as that is the aspect of the sound I personally enjoy most, but even as is, there can be no meaningful complaints from me and I thoroughly enjoyed this immensely.

4/5

Glad you guys enjoyed it.  I do not have a lot to add to my existing review. I picked up on Vastum with their debut release back in 2011 and got to a point where I picked up most of what they put out right up until I heard Orificial Purge and just got bored by it really.  Hole Below was their last great release for me and I found Patricidal Lust a bit lacing in terms of comparison with the debut.  I toyed with dropping the debut as my featured release but I went for this in the end as a more modern reference.