Gorguts - The Erosion of Sanity (1993) Reviews

Monstrous technical death metal album filled with creativity and darkness.

Erosion of Sanity picks up where Considered Dead left us with a twist of Effigy of Forgotten. That's what I had in mind when coming to review this beast of an album. I very much enjoyed Considered Dead, but Erosion of Sanity is miles ahead of it when it comes to technicality, brutality and sheer darkness. Suffocation's debut clearly had an influence on these Canadian's song writing between albums as there is a whole bunch of brutal death metal styled rhythms and time changes that simply weren't there before. This is one seriously monstrous sounding album that will take a few spins to really come to grips with.

The musicianship is stunning! The drumming is extremely varied and creative, never falling into repetitive blast beat territory. Luc’s vocals are great as usual, managing to be brutal yet decipherable throughout. The bass is audible and a major instrument which isn’t something I can say for many albums of this ilk (in most cases I can’t even distinguish it). The guitar rhythms and leads are all amazing technically and audibly. The excitement level that this album reaches is hard to match and when you add an excellent crisp production, intelligent, intriguing lyrics and Dan Seagrave’s typically awesome artwork, you get a damn essential death metal release. The absolute highlight is Condemned to Obscurity (I absolute love that whacked out riff) and Orphans of Sickness and Dormant Misery are gold too. If you like your death metal brutal yet creative, check out Erosions of Sanity. Just make sure you give it a few listens to let it get its claws in.

Warning! Warning! Fucking monster influence alert! Immense masses of fanboyism will likely ensue in the paragraphs that follow ladies & gentlemen! You see, I was already a big fan of Canada's Gorguts when their 1993 sophomore album "The Erosion of Sanity" landed on the shelves. I'd purchased their 1991 debut "Considered Dead" on CD a year or two earlier & it had left me thoroughly impressed, perhaps not with the originality in Gorguts' sound as that release wasn't exactly groundbreaking however its execution was top notch & it showcased an outstanding pedigree in classic death metal. By 1993 though, I'd become obsessed with the more brutal end of the genre & had also developed a fascination with the more technically proficient bands in the scene so it came as a wonderful surprise to hear my brand-new copy of Gorguts second full-length upping the ante in both departments. "The Erosion of Sanity" would go on to play a major role in the direction of my own band Neuropath over the next few years so it's always maintained a special place in my heart. This week I decided to give it a more critical investigation than I'd ever done before in order to see where it rightfully should sit in the star-studded Gorguts back-catalogue.

While "Considered Dead" was extremely proficient at what it attempted & delivered a very solid meat-&-potatoes brand of death metal, I don't think I ever thought of it as any sort of classic as it simply came a little too late in the game for that with the bands & records it was trying to emulate already having produced the elite releases for its old-school death metal sound & occasionally even doing it better too. "The Erosion of Sanity" saw Gorguts taking a new direction though. The early Death influence that dominated "Considered Dead" had been replaced by a more modern & sophisticated compositional approach that was much closer to Death's "Human" than it was Chuck Schuldiner's earlier works while the riff structures had been boosted by a significant amount of complexity & technicality, not to mention having been beefed up by the influence of brutal death metal pioneers Suffocation whose debut album "Effigy of the Forgotten" had clearly been in high rotation in the Gorguts rehearsal studio. This time the band had opted not to record at Florida's legendary Morrisound Studios with its equally notorious producer Scott Burns, instead staying home in Quebec where they worked with Englishman Steve Harris (no, not that one) who had previously worked with extreme metal bands like Acid Reign, Lawnmower Deth, Fear Factory & Bolt Thrower which has resulted in a seriously chunky & quite dense production job that perfectly highlights Gorguts' strengths, even if it can leave things sounding a little samey if you're not paying close attention.

Gorguts' had maintained the same lineup that produced "Considered Dead" which certainly helped their cause but, as we now know, it's always been guitarist Luc Lemay's (Negativa) project & his vocals are a major highlight on "The Erosion of Sanity", with his raspy growl rearing up into monstrous territory quite regualarly. Lemay provides the song-writing with the touch of added savagery that was needed to give Gorguts more of an edge & it works very well over the more ambitious instrumentation which sees the album easily managing to differentiate itself from its more than acceptable older sibling. The musicianship on display is nothing short of dazzling at times & I particularly enjoy the bass performance of Eric Giguere who shows himself to be leaps & bounds ahead of most of his contemporaries, buoyed by a nice mix that helps to isolate his basslines from the controlled chaos that surrounds them. There's a spider-fingered feel to the way Gorguts have constructed many of the riffs that leaves me with no doubt whatsoever of the influence of Suffocation, only these lads opt to deliver their assault with more subtlety, if not much more in the way of dynamics.

The tracklisting is particularly consistent with all eight songs showing themselves to offer plenty on the way of thick, heavily palm-muted yet still highly technical death metal riffage. The A side is completely without blemish & leaves the listener with little option but to claim Gorguts as a new member of the tier one death metal players. There are a couple of tracks included on the B side that aren't quite at that level (see "Hideous Infirmity" & closer "Dormant Misery") but the other six songs are simply ooze of class & a feel that's undeniably classic. If I was forced to pick favourites I'd have to go for the first three songs with the title track being perhaps my pick of the bunch.

The Gorguts back catalogue sits amongst the strongest in all of death metal in my opinon so "The Erosion of Sanity" was always gonna have stiff competition in that regard but I'm thrilled to have discovered that it's lost none of its charm over the three decades since I first purchased my CD. Sadly, I'd suggest that it's no longer my absolute favourite Gorguts record though. I think that honour would now have to go to 2013's magnificent comeback album "Colored Sands" while I'd also suggest that I'd place 2001's "From Wisdom to Hate" release slightly ahead of "The Erosion of Sanity" these days. That's not to say that this is not still a classic technical death metal record though & one of the rare tech death releases that has a legitimate claim to the tag too, rather than simply being a mistagged progressive death metal record. After the experience of this weeks revisit, I have no hesitation in claiming that every The Horde member worth their zombie film collection should treat "The Erosion of Sanity" as essential listening.

For fans of Death, Suffocation & Cryptopsy.

Gorguts released their debut, the meat and potatoes death metal album Considered Dead, in 1991. Seven years later and about three hundred light years removed from the debut they released the much-lauded, technical, avant-garde death metal album Obscura, an album, my own struggles with which I have documented elsewhere. Despite my problems with Obscura, even I can hear that these sound like two completely different bands, yet somehow they travelled from one to the other, the journey they were taking, during a pitstop in 1993, producing The Erosion of Sanity.

I wouldn't say that The Erosion of Sanity sits midway between Considered Dead and Obscura, it still retains too many of the fundaments of death metal for that, but it does drop massive hints as to the direction of travel that Gorguts were taking as they developed their sound from, frankly, the Death copyists that were represented on the debut to the out-there boundary-pushers that they were to become. For me personally Erosion of Sanity hits a bit of a sweet spot between the solid, but unoriginal death metal of their earlier days and the indigestible technicalities of their infinitely more challenging and complex later work. This is an extremely tight-sounding album with the band hitting all their marks superbly. The riffs are tight and brutal-sounding and are supported by the rhythm section that pounds out dynamic and original-sounding patterns, with the bass sitting high enough in the mix to have a higher than usual impact upon the overall sound to great effect. Luc Lemay's harsh, throaty bark sounds vicious, yet the lyrics are still perfectly understandable, despite this invective-filled, spitting delivery. Where I feel that Erosion of Sanity scores over a lot of technical death metal in the same way that Death's Human does, is that the displays of technical prowess in both execution and songwriting don't interrupt the flow of the tracks and what we still have at the root of it all is a slab of heavy as hell and brutal death metal with killer riffs and exhilarating lead work.

There is far more going on here than was presented on Considered dead and the band's evolution in a mere couple of years was quite remarkable, but there were wholesale changes to Gorguts' lineup after Erosion of Sanity, with guitarist/vocalist Luc Lemay being the only member appearing on both Erosion and Obscura. I am guessing this meant that Lemay was the instigator of Gorguts' move in a more avant-garde direction and his judgement was that his fellow band members either weren't on board with that direction of travel or weren't technically gifted enough to pull off his vision of where he wanted the band to go. For me, however, this is an excellent example of technical death metal that still retains what makes death metal exciting without becoming too "cerebral" and losing me. Whilst Obscura and their later complex works seem to be what Gorguts are best known for, they aren't for me and I will stick with this and hold it up as an example of what I personally look for in tech-death circles.

I often think that Gorguts grew almost too quickly for their own good.  I mean an album of the ilk of Obscura getting dropped by a band just three records into their career is mind-boggling, even with a five year gap between it's predecessor.  Already by the time the band got around to their sophomore record you could pracitcally hear the cogs whirring around in the heads of most DM fans wondering how a band could develop and mature so quickly in just two years.  The Erosion of Sanity was a real beast to have to contend with as a standalone record, let alone a follow up to an already solid and very capable debut that had heads looking at the band already.  When a band hones its art that quickly and that deftly you have to forgive those that get left behind in the fan base.  If you got stranded at The Erosion of Sanity by Obscura I kind of understand it.  I mean the second album from Gorguts is superb.  Varied, dense and technical are just some of the words you could throw in its direction but overall it is still a solid, consistent and pummeling experience for the die-hards of the scene to lap up.

Reading Ben's review earlier, he's absolutely right on the Suffocation comparison, as the influence of that band is painted all over the walls of this record.  As a result the album has a constant weight to it no matter what the frequency of the tempo being played is.  This density provides atmosphere for virtually the whole record, even on the acoustic strings that introduce the closing track Dormant Misery there is a sense of impending peril in the air.  Yet at the same time the whole record has a rabid and urgent style to it that instills a sense of nervous anxiety in the listener as they track the intense and unrelenting delivery of some fine death metal.

The technical aspect to the sound goes slightly unnoticed at the first couple of listens making this an album that rewards frequent visits to it as you start peel back the initial layer of acute brutality that you think is the sole purpose of the album to find further layers of textures beneath for you to assess and understand.  Tracks like Orphans of Sickness are what true technical death metal is all about, shifting and surging like some turgid river in the midst of monsoon season.  The song feels vile and putrid yet there's no doubt that fiendish and devilish hands were present in its construction to provide a masterful and unsettling edge at the same time.

I am slowly getting to owning all physical copies of Gorguts' discography because they are a band who have yet to put a foot wrong across a career that has seen them take a well-known genre with a distinct sound and direction and push the boundaries of it into the outer-stratosphere.  The Erosion of Sanity is when the rocket boosters kicked in and took them clear of most of the competition at the time.