REVIEW: Disfiguring the Goddess – Deprive (2013)
Artist: Disfiguring the Goddess
Album: Deprive
Looming, lingering, limitless—this darkness hovers all around you, besetting you on all sides. It laughs at your attempts for illumination, voraciously swallowing every spark from every match you ignite to attempt to light your way. This is darkness so thick it snakes around your limbs and into your mind like sentient tar—like a serpent made of the midnight sky. This darkness is Deprive, the latest release by relentlessly heavy slamming deathcore project Disfiguring the Goddess—an artist name which hardly needs an introduction. Guttural, muddy guitars, catchy electronic elements, pulverizing drums and grotesque vocals combine to create prolapse inducing slams—but this should come as no surprise. For years now, Cameron Argon—the mastermind behind Disfiguring the Goddess and Big Chocolate—has been hard at work making the darkest and most intense music possible. Deprive is no different.
As intense and suffocating as the darkness that is Deprive is, it is far from stagnant. Disfiguring the Goddess waste absolutely no time in reaching out and grabbing the listener by the throat—and it is done with nothing else but pulverizing blast beats and intense instrumentation. “The Pathway of Everlasting Nothingness” kicks off with a no-holds barred attack on the listener with low-down-and-dirty guitar and bass attacks that coat the break-neck drumming with a thick layer of grime. Deprive in its entirety uses this approach of constant degradation of the listener’s sanity. Even “Deprive” and “Swarm King,” the album’s two shortest tracks, are as dense as concrete made from broken bones. Absolutely incessant instrumental attacks on the listener keep Deprive roaring at a pace that makes it seem to fly by even faster than its (already brief) twenty minute run-time would make it seem.
Alongside the relentless instrumental attack runs the vicious and equally incessant vocal aspect of Deprive. Argon brings precisely the vocal style that fans of Disfiguring the Goddess would be hoping for—bitter, gut-wrenching and almost-intolerably low and gritty guttural vocals. From the first seconds of “The Pathway of Everlasting Nothingness” to the closing seconds of “Old Man,” Argon hardly lets up. The listener can practically hear Argon’s vocal chords tearing and can practically feel the blood spray mist upon their cheeks. The vocal element of Disfiguring the Goddess—love it or hate it—is a defining feature of the act’s dynamic, and it delivers perfectly on Deprive. One thing that simply cannot be denied is how marvelously the vocals fit the album’s instrumentation. The low, intense gutturals accent the muddy and absurd guitar and bass tones, while the hammering, juggernaut pace of the drums somehow fails to shake the pace at which Argon lets loose with his vocal onslaught. To put it briefly, the vocals are a defining and masterfully done element to Deprive—even if they will cause many potential listeners to turn away.
The true culmination of Disfiguring the Goddess’ divine musical ability on Deprive can be seen in the inclusion of catchy samples and electronic elements. The truth is that Disfiguring the Goddess attack the listener with such an intense onslaught of demoralizing and downtuned debauchery that after even just a couple tracks, it can get to be almost too much to bear—or at least it could get that way. Because of Argon’s inclusion of catchy synths—best seen on “The Pathway of Everlasting Nothingness” and “Home of the Dollmaker”—is a stroke of genius that keeps the listener engaged and immersed in all the bitter, brooding brutality that Deprive has to offer.
Disfiguring the Goddess’ latest release will do more than kill time or keep the listener’s head banging. Rather—Deprive is true to its namesake, depriving the listener of their sanity and their will to live. Creating a detailed, immersive and near-tangible all-swallowing nothingness, Deprive is an intense experience for fans of intense music.
9.25/10
For Fans Of: Ingested, Cerebral Bore, I Declare War, Thy Art is Murder
By: Connor Welsh