These days there are as many iterations of death metal as there are Amish Yoders or Mennonite Klassens. 1 Yet beneath all the stylistic offshoots and surface affects beats the heart of a big dummy caveman. Strip death metal to its essentials and you get a hulking lad who as a student left a trail of half-eaten textbooks and as an adult, dreams of a farm of his own where he can tend rabbits with his friend George. Phoenix, Arizona’s Thra start with that syrupy death metal reduction and ask themselves, “How can we make this even uglier and stupider?” The answer: with sludge, of course. Yes, the one metal form even less concerned with hygiene, boasting the highest aural density and the lowest dynamic range. Forged In Chaotic Spew is Thra’s debut full-length, and it’s a knuckle-dragging, powerlifting, puppy petting oh shit I killed it George blast of filthy, chuggy death metal.
On that side of things, Thra are guilty of Incantationanigans most mischievous. Their death metal tends old. Most of it is mid-paced, though it drops into doom-ish plodding regularly. The primary modes of riff delivery range from stomping chugs, as found in “Drag,” to tremolos across most songs. These spring more from the death metal tradition than black metal, so I wouldn’t personally categorize them as blackened. The tremolo riffs on “Blistering Eternity” and album standout “Primordial Engorgement” are particularly enjoyable. More often than not, the sludge aspects play a supporting role, but that doesn’t mean they’re not noticeable. There’s muck an inch thick on top of the usual guitar down-tuning and vocalist Robert Wolfe’s harsh delivery leans more corrosive sludge doom than guttural death growl. Full-blown sludge does elbow its way to the fore at times across the back half of the album, and the material is stronger for it.
Forged In Chaotic Spew isn’t trying to do anything more than string one ugly, ignorant groove after another, and unsurprisingly, their sludge/death concoction proves an ideal means to this end. In fact, the deeper into the album you get, the thicker the aural crud becomes and the easier it is to just let your face scrunch up in disgusted approval. The early tracks are fine, but the effect here is cumulative. By the time you get to the transition in “Blistering Eternity” where the tremolo death riffing drops off and the first purely sludge doom passage takes over, it’s like lying under a lead blanket “Primordial Engorgement” follows, a perfectly titled highlight for such a girthy prehistoric beast. Call it Thra’s thesis statement, or maybe whatever that is when dogs look like their owners. “Primordial Engorgement” is a well-balanced blend of death sludge, played at just the right mid-to-slow tempo. The jarring guitar tone appropriately churns deep in the gut like tectonic plates pushing up mountains. “Cosmic Scourge” continues the winning formula to close things out on a high (down-tuned) note.
As with a lot of records that try to “Keep It Simple, Stupid,” Thra’s Forged In Chaotic Spew, unfortunately, has a memorability problem. This is a quintessential example of enjoying the music while it’s playing and then forgetting it when it’s done, and this is especially true of the album’s front half. At the time of writing, I’ve heard “Flame Lurker” and “Fracture” about a dozen times, but I couldn’t hum the main riffs if asked. The riffs that do stick are straightforward to the point of overfamiliarity. I swear I’ve heard the opening to “Cosmic Scourge” before but couldn’t say where. It’s not as if there’s a lot of material to chew through and forget either. Minus the interlude tracks, the record clocks in at a slim 32 minutes, which begs the question of interlude necessity.
Maybe we should look on the bright side. It’s annoying when a song gets stuck in your head. Besides, Forged In Chaotic Spew is an entertaining roll in the muck while it lasts, and in the small sliver of Venn diagram where sludge and death metal overlaps, it can help tide us all over until the new Warcrab platter drops in October.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Translation Loss Records
Websites: thra.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/Thraphx
Releases Worldwide: July 28th, 2023
