Disfiguring the Goddess - Sleeper

I’ve known the name Disfiguring the Goddess for a couple of years, but I haven’t bothered to pick up their music until a week ago, when I got ahold of Sleeper. This guy has clearly and explicitly identified himself as brutal slamming death metal. I know that the whole slamming brutality thing just recently got “popular”. I can tell because most of the bands with this much brutality formed after the millennium, and often times only have one record out. Another thing that I’ve noticed is that these bands tend to be short-lived. There are several bands of this genre that have released one amazing album and haven’t given any recent update or sign of activity or life. I’ve always wondered why so many of these awesome bands just seem to disappear out of thin air! Some of these bands include Bloodboil (released an album in 2006), Guttural Secrete (released one album in 2006), Pyaemia (only album is from 2001), and Eden Beast (debut released 2008). Disfiguring the Goddess is one of those bands that have stayed consistently active and informative to fans regarding updates and new material. I personally think that Sleeper is Disfiguring the Goddess’ best album to date.

Disfiguring the Goddess is part of the new brutal death wave that uses exaggerated breakdowns. Although some people would call it deathcore, remember that the metal breakdown didn’t originate in metalcore, it actually was first created and used by (please correct me if I’m wrong or if I miss a critical band) bands like Suffocation, Dying Fetus, and Atheist. Ever since the turn of the century, this temporary extreme drop in tempo that metal bands use to release all the built-up tension can be found in so many albums that I can’t even name a fraction of them. The really technical and complex breakdown that Meshuggah is credited for perfecting is what Disfiguring the Goddess uses.

This album uses an extensive amount of atmospheric keyboard samples and electronic/digital effects to give the music a unique feel. There seems to be a lot of digital effects used on the guitars; primarily to make them sound choppier and tighter, which gives the music a much more technical feeling. There also is a slight overuse of the bass boom at the beginning of breakdowns. On top of that, there are points in this record where everything sounds somewhat…artificial. This is what happens when there are too much digital effects and the album is literally overproduced (or “over-perfected”). I guess that’s the big downer that this album holds; it’s overproduced.

Like you would expect, the vocals consist of deep, nasty inhaled growls. There are some exhaled screams thrown in here and there. The growls are very powerful and don’t have an emotionless and tasteless sound like so many other brutal death vocalists. This album is extremely experimental, especially on the electronic/digital side of things, but it still delivers the ultimate SLAMMING brutality Disfiguring the Goddess is known best for. I would give this album 12/20. I would recommend this to fans of slamming brutality that are curious to hear some experimentalism. I don’t know where this sound will go, but it’s certainly something new.