I don’t know what possessed me. Maybe it was a genuine desire to get out of my comfort zone with some straightforwardly grimy death metal. Maybe it was the trusted Transcending Obscurity label, or the pleasing purple color scheme (though not the art itself, which is definitely not pleasing). Maybe it was just the name Dead and Dripping which amused me with its stereotypical death metal disgustingness. Because, no, I hadn’t heard of Dead and Dripping before, despite this being their third outing. But I was safe to assume not only that their latest installment would differ from the kind of thing I usually cover, but that its contents would prove almost as trite as their classically evocative moniker. Blackened Cerebral Rifts—which I continue to misread as Blackened Cerebral Riffs—is a brutal, ugly, mass of metal instrumentation vomited violently over its listener with no concern for their constitution or their patience. Technical in its elements, it remains brutish in execution, such that even those into the grindiest and ugliest of extreme music may take issue with its incessant cacophony.
There’s such a fine line between brilliantly bonkers brutal and brainless boring ear-bashing isn’t there? At times like this, I think about how ridiculous all this hair-splitting would appear to someone outside the metal-verse. While similar acts like Sarmat, or Asystole make incredibly inaccessible music (to about 99% of the human population), their skill in crafting intelligent, subversive, and ultimately, gripping compositions renders their work worthy of high praise. Ugly, dissonant, yet weirdly very aesthetically pleasing. To contrast this with Dead and Dripping’s pong-snare-saturated, gurgle-vocal-gorged, squealing-discordant-guitar-heavy work, and complain that the latter is unappealing may seem hypocritical, or just weird. But as close as Blackened Cerebral Rifts may be to its perverted brethren in many of its attributes, it’s a world away from them in actuality.
The sole known entity behind Dead and Dripping, Evan Daniele, is clearly talented. He proves his fast fretwork in convoluted riff patterns (“Aural Interference with Uncanny Subconscious Frequencies”1), noodling (“Meticulously Unravelling the Serpentine Consciousness”), stomach-churning soloing (“Tragic Ascent of Absurdity’s Pale Moon”), and even his ability and willingness to craft melody and atmosphere (“Hopeless Desire for Reprieve”). The drumming—despite a maddeningly loud and aggressively grating snare tone much of the time—is magnificent. A mishmash of acrobatic rollovers and gymnastic fills, the best of which can be found on “Aural…,” “Kaleidoscopic Visions of Porous Obsidian Eternities,” and “Molecular Degeneration Upon Warped Onyx Stoves.” While much of the musicianship remains an apparent effort to be as complicated, confrontational, and, admittedly, cool as possible, there’s actually a point during “Infinitely Plummeting into Violet Portals of Delusion” where Daniele almost seems to channel Innumerable Forms with layered, doomy, reverberating guitars and crawling percussion. Not that the music isn’t also complicated here, just channeled into a cohesive and engaging shape.
There is probably a point at which the very brutishness and outlandishness of the heaviness actually becomes brilliant, at least to some people. Genre aficionados are likely to be split by Dead and Dripping’s take on what is almost a caricature of death metal here. Blackened Cerebral Rifts is twisted, unpleasant, and pretty relentless, but in a way that stops being shocking and exciting and becomes almost trite. If you’re a big fan of their previous work, you’ll probably enjoy this. My recommendation would be to seek deeper wells to drink from to get one’s fix of that disgustingly sweet, deliciously depraved death metal ambrosia.
Rating: Disappointing
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records
Websites: deadanddrippingus.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/DeDnDrPnG69
Releases Worldwide: August 11th, 2023
