Mutant Breakfast's 2022 Selects (Part 2)
We enter the top ten of Mutant Breakfast's Selects, where the stakes get higher and the steaks get thicker (and juicier). Check out Part 1 of our three-part 2022 review here, but also be sure to take in the diversity of game at this elevated terrain—where skronky purgatorial death metal (DM) can comfortably coexist with forest-gnome black metal (BM) and post-punk, post-metal madness. Feast your ears, fellow mutants!
№ 10: Acausal Intrusion - Seeping Evocation (I, Voidhanger)
It feels good to blurb one year later about a band whose debut I proclaimed my record of 2021, and Seeping Evocation is the paragon of a great sophomore release. Not only does it retain Nulitas’s absurd gothicism and gloriously mathy/techy homage to Demilich, but it also improves and introduces new elements to that enviable formula. The grungy guitars are still there, and so is that brootal pong snare resonating in celestial spheres. But Acausal Intrusion have also upped their game with better and more mouth-watering synth work; production that's more sensitive to Jared Moran’s virtuosity behind the kit; and even First Utterance-like acoustic passages. That all of these shiny new features are packed into a shorter runtime is goddamn impressive—even if, listening to Seeping Evocation, one also realizes that the novelty of Nulitas’s uniquely looming and spooky entropy has worn off. Having picked the low-hanging fruit, Acausal Intrusion leave themselves little choice going forward but to tread new ground again. I suspect one solution might be to lace the chaos with more drama and narrative, like in those sunnier chord progressions at the end of “Mnemonic Confabulation.” Whatever the answer, though, I’m not worried these talented musicians can find it.
-Mutant Geccho
№ 9: Sedimentum - Suppuration morphogénésiaque (Me Saco Un Ojo)
Me Saco Un Ojo's knack for curating top-shelf DM continued in 2022, not least because the label welcomed Quebecois up-and-comers Sedimentum into their flyblown midst. In hindsight, they were playing with loaded dice. The band cruelly dominated a pair of split EPs in 2020 and 2021, so it should come as no surprise that their debut unleashed a more robust version of their swampy, fecund take on doomy DM. In keeping with the French tradition for nuance, Suppuration morphogénésiaque is fussy about texture, but not at the expense of lumbering groove. Riffs thwack and smash like a sasquatch fist to the ribs, and they're delivered with an outré swagger that splashes the earth-tone palette with colorful flecks of marbled gore. This is music that's as artsy as it is feral—the guitar tone is thick and tangled like matted fur; the bass oozes and slimes; the vocals rut and roar; and the organic, mid-heavy production finesses these elements into a mix that secretes an unforgettably pungent musk. You might need a shower after this one.
-Mutant Crisper
№ 8: Feral Light - Psychic Contortions (I, Voidhanger)
Feral Light grab the more pretentious BM fan by their tidy white collar from the get-go, as an unpredictable cacophony stirs into action and deranged vocals leap straight for the jugular. With a mixture of creative riffing and seething guitar tone, tracks like “Enveloped and Transformed” are equally capable of evoking a chuggy DM throwdown as they are Suffering Hour’s twangy, sadistic dirges. Variety is the band's most valuable asset. The tempos toggle unpredictably; “Self-Disavow” takes a steadier pace with riffage distended into a doomier mould, while “Attainment” follows with a vicious elaboration upon the band's blackened-hardcore inclinations. Cleaner sections refuse to kow-tow to tired post-black conventions, instead maintaining the band's signature, knotty craft. It’s not that Feral Light part from the Romantic inclinations of their countrymen; it's that they replace the calm vistas of Noltem or Agalloch with the tumult of tectonic plates, upon them no noble beasts but vicious predators fighting to live. Psychic Contortions did not originate in the mind of a city-slicker, inspired by idealistic visions of harmonious forests. This is gritty music for and from wandering rustics, birthed by decomposing Midwestern heartlands.
-Mutant Trojan
№ 7: Sunrise Patriot Motion - Black Fellflower Stream (Sibir / Gilead)
Will Skarstad is solely responsible for our timing; Ustalost’s late-December release last year was the apple of both mine and Crisper’s eyes, so of course we bullied Geccho into letting us wait until January to collate and publish this list, for fear of missing a late-year classic. Luckily, this year’s offering from Will and his guitar-toting sibling dropped in June, infusing the woozy Brothers Skarstad™ sound with gothic post-punk. As befits their new inspirations, the bass performance is articulate and dominant (“Sunrise Labyrinthian” has already been committed to my 5-string), ably driving the fuzzy guitars and echoing drums. Vocals leap between deranged mutters and desperate howls, as if Chairs Missing was being performed in karaoke by a particularly drunken Fenriz. The band blend themes as well as sounds; the anxious post-industrial neurosis of This Heat or Pere Ubu is filtered through the existential preoccupations of modern BM, into a protagonist “neglect[ed]… violently” by his community and fixated upon a quixotic goal. It’s not all misery, though: “My Father’s Christian Humidor” is a surprisingly effervescent tune, and even the urgent “Cruel is the Joke” dips into more buoyant territory. Perhaps most importantly, this crossover has a distinct and unusual personality, with copious use of synths (drawn perhaps from the hallucinatory passages of Cabaret Voltaire’s playbook) dousing the album in a sickly, lurid light. Black Fellflower Stream is a psychoactive psychodrama – and I am fully addicted.
-Mutant Trojan
Following a banner year for war metal, with Altarage, Antediluvian, and Autokrator all releasing top-tier records, 2022 would inevitably follow the subgenre’s 2021 peak with a trough. Thankfully, Melburnian blackened-DM veterans Eskhaton know how to caulk that hole in war metalheads’ sick hearts—with nitroglycerin. Mutant Crisper already praised Horracle’s smoky atmosphere and pummeling riffs, but it remains to articulate why this armageddon devastates other wannabes in its subgeneric vicinity. Much of this more traditional, Bestial Warlust-derived war metal—even by worthy practitioners like Caveman Cult and Weregoat—can strain the guitar track in a desperation to convey viscerality, reducing even active performances to tinny scratches. Not so here, where everything booms beefily. Like with Cabinet and Bloody Mountain Records’ other acts, I suspect Eskhaton’s brawn comes from being genuine old heads, who remember that blasting Vengeance War ‘till Death (and, apparently, overlooking Warlust’s sus-ass politics) was about embracing danger, aberrance, and heaviness. I don’t even really like Bestial Warlust (too tape-hissy for me), but I think that’s because it’s only natural their sonic gambit should sound different today. Eskhaton are wise enough to know that—and burly enough to keep bringing it.
-Mutant Geccho
№ 5: Black Death Cult - Diaspora (Profound Lore)
It's not often that I get to drop a Dark Crystal reference in a metal review, but the brain-curdling caterwauls that erupt from opener "Neon Cross" sound exactly like someone strangling a petulant Skeksi. Not that I think the necro-ragamuffins in Black Death Cult would mind the comparison. The band seems intent on couching their pupil-dilating death-doom heresy in a wild assortment of hallucinatory patois, incorporating a kitchen-sink approach that gives Diaspora a newfangled, cosmopolitan aesthetic. Most extreme metal bands that spuriously tag themselves as "psychedelic" are as jejune and tedious as the tie-dyed 70s space rock that they ape—confusing phaser pedal whooshes, pilfered Hawkwind riffs, and pedestrian synth-presets for legitimately mind-expanding content. Thankfully, Black Death Cult are anything but vintage, and their debut is a fulminating vat of creepy-crawly ambient, charred psych, and dissociative DM that will rattle even the most veteran psychonauts. To our knowledge, no muppets were actually harmed during the making of this album, so you can listen with a clear conscience, too.
-Mutant Crisper
№ 4: Stangarigel - Na severe srdca (Hexencave)
It's no secret around the Mutant Breakfast watercooler that I'm persnickety about melody in my metal. Stangarigel's debut Na severe srdca offers a perfect rebuttal to my crotchety prejudices. Theirs is an unmistakably melodic take on pagan BM, but the sylvan lyricism is a far cry from the schmaltzy post-rock stylings that render a lot of atmoblack (and most blackgaze) unlistenable. My inner curmudgeon was quickly bewitched by its enchanted old-world magic, the occasionally pentatonic strut (there's some Led Zeppelin and Blue Öyster Cult lurking in the syntax), and the mournful elven battle-doots emanating from its druidic spell-craft. Long story short, the Slovakian duo behind this Malokarpatan side project have created something timeless and transcendent. This is music that taps the sprawling beech forests of their homeland for mana, and that primeval energy glitters behind every note. If more melodic BM sounded like this, I'd be forced to change my tune.
-Mutant Crisper