Those who have been following this webzine from its inception will recall the numerous times I’ve waxed poetic on the beloved Chicago DIY haunt, the Fallout. Yes kiddies, once upon a time, you could see half a dozen of Chi-town’s finest thrash and punk bands play a storage locker behind a Mexican restaurant on a sweaty Saturday night for the low, low price of $5. Amongst the bands who’d play there on any given weekend was Misanthropy. True to their era, Misanthropy sang about the things braindead teenage thrashers loved best: weed, sharks…sharks on weed. And then, one day, something unexpected happened.
Maybe the aliens had laced their weed with an andromeda strain. Maybe founder Kevin Kovalsky had listened to Gorguts’ Obscura one too many times, pushed over the brink of sanity by Luc Lemay’s logic-defying guitar wizardry. Maybe it was a little bit of both, and perhaps even an unknown X factor. Whatever the reason may be, Misanthropy said goodbye to their pizza thrashing ways and reemerged as a full blown tech death vehicle. These leanings were introduced on their 2018 sophomore album, Abhorrent Metamorphosis, and are explored even further with greater confidence on their third and latest outing, The Ever-Crushing Weight of Stagnance.
In an age where tech death continues to be streamlined and mapped out to the point of sheer boredom, Misanthropy take a unique approach, drawing from the spontaneity of the genre’s ’90s forefathers. The Gorguts influence is more than evident throughout, particularly on the opening “Of Sulking and the Wrathful”, with its low, detuned crushing guitar riffs and schizophrenically avant-garde switchovers. However, a Gorguts worship album this is not. Misanthropy push the boundaries of modern tech death by emboldening Stagnance with breakneck thrash riffs, ignorant mosh breakdowns, and truly progressive musicianship that at times lies closer to ’70s album rock than prog metal.
An example of the aforementioned would be the hard rocking Thin Lizzy-esque twin guitar shuffle of “Of Sulking” towards the outro, or even the spacey Yes flavored jamming of “A Cure for the Pestilence”. The fact that the band crafts these outbursts to coexist so comfortably alongside feral tech death/thrashers like “The All Devouring” and “Sepulcher”, or the overtly dismal and dissonant “Descent” (tech death/doom anyone?) speaks volumes. The icing on this heady death metal cake are the cranium-smashing slams throughout. I’m well aware of Kovalsky’s penchant for bands like Snuffed on Sight and PeelingFlesh, both bands that Misnathropy manage to overshadow with utterly stupid breakdowns on songs like “Condemend to a Nameless Tomb” and the aforementioned “A Cure”.
For a release of its nature, The Ever-Crushing Weight of Stagnance is a truly refreshing affair. Even when the songs lie on the longer side, they don’t overstay their welcome, and manage to keep the listener hooked for whatever may happen next. It’s a shame that there isn’t more tech death out there following these cues, but it’s all the more reason why Misanthropy has the market cornered and likely will for years to follow. No laptop? No care. These maniacs are functioning on unadulterated chaos, and that can’t be pre-programmed.
7 out of 10
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records
Genre: Technical Death Metal
For fans of: Gorguts, Atheist, Xoth
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