Encystment – Egregious Treatment of Cloacal Extrophy (New Standard Elite)
Monday, 27th July 2020
Truthfully speaking, in looking at the combination of the band name and album title (props for using the term ‘cloaca’) with the over-the-top gore on the cover, you already know if you are going to dig this one or not. Considering it’s also on New Standard Elite, a label known for carrying some of the most brutal bands around, it more or less seals the deal.
Encystment hail from Ecuador, and Egregious Treatment of Cloacal Extrophy sounds exactly like you would expect it to, given the inferences above. It’s completely and thoroughly brutal to the bone. Thick, disgusting riffs that don’t mind mudding themselves up for the sake of brutality, thin but intense blastbeats on a regular basis as the band hits the gas pedal as hard as they can, some occasional grooves in the mid-tempo (along with some brutal death breakdowns) ensure that it’s not all blasts all the time, and of course, completely ‘sick’ guttural vocals with lyrics that you will need a dictionary to decipher. Some occasional croaks here and there (“Lascivious Ingestment of Fetid Secretions”), but they never feel out of place. Bottom line, once the brutality gets started, there is literally nothing that gets in its way. For better or worse, as the genre’s pitfalls start to show up the longer it goes on for – becoming rather blurry at times on what determines song from song. But being on the shorter side of things, length-wise, this issue is a minimal distraction from the album’s all-out ferocity.
There’s plenty of brutal death metal out there to digest, but once in a while, it’s nice to check out an act that plays the game well. Sure, there’s a few trappings here and there that are expected, but Encystment never goes too far into the deep end in trying to out-brutalize the next band and come across as pretty well-rounded for genre standards. If you enjoy brutal death metal, this one serves it up with murderous glee.
