Transcendence into the Peripheral

These guys were chilling at home one night baked on blunts (that's the safer PG-13 bet, by the way) and one of them played the Cathedral's Forrest of Aquarium album or whatever it's called on some early 90's cassette system and it provoked an epiphany in each of the members' deep consciousness. One of the guys, luckily, had a guitar and amp and cab that he doodled with occasionally and started vaguely imitating the doom stuff: chuggy chug chugs with coarse, awkwardly articulated riffs played on the low E string, at around 50 bpm (life is hard when you're heavily sedated). The drummer, stoned out of his mind and permanently on the edge of collapsing, followed the apathetic pace of the repeating guitars, while adding a little double-kick run of 16ths when he got bored.

The guys were also fans of the early Swedish death metal sound, so they'd imported the EQ config to their setup and jammed a few passages of that too. Thankfully the guitarist could tremolo pick and the drummer could Lombardo and blast. The problem is when he does blast, the guitars go missing and it's unsure whether that's because they're so covered by the drums or the guitarist simply stops playing entirely and waits for the next beat to come on to resume his inspiring performance. The vocalist didn't know what to do so he pulled a vomit-y type of grunting, some moments more remote than others. His tummy did hurt from the gallons of beer, and it's fair to infer some of the recorded vocals were involuntary sounds. Also, occasionally, a high shriek barf would spew out of him. When he wasn't doing that, he would try himself at the emotional clean stuff, which wasn't always out of tune. By the looks of it they were going for some sort of depiction of the album title plot: transcendence into the beer bubble, as perhaps more fitting to the music here.

The guitarist intermittently gets knocked into a stupor and remembers all the clean guitar parts he'd learned from The Cure and in those moments starts playing slight variations: they sometimes connect with the chord progressions, sometimes, not so much. But he plays them and swears he's reaching the seventh heaven, which he may've been doing in a more clinical definition. There's that primal spiritual reverence in this - with a very loose definition of "primal" and a very, very loose definition of "spiritual reverence".

The last track, 'something something Of All My Imagined Shoes' has that silent part with a trippy sitar type effect. It's cool. Like many great, great movies in cinema: it's unsure whether these works of art should be given anything less than 100% rating. They're so unique and artistic. This sounds like very little else, and is entertaining in its own right. But maybe it's received enough 100's on this website so for the sake of not transcending too much peripherally, let's dare venture towards a fathomable (and more concrete) universe where this isn't a 100. Finally, this may be what a wise man was warning about as his words rang out: "drugs are bad, mkay".

As innovative and influential as they are, Disembowelment remain one of those tricky bands to judge for me. I enjoy their concept and musical intent, yet execution-wise, I have mixed feelings about this band. They have a thing for musical depth, assaulting your senses and provide twisted riffs that even the most ordinary death metal fans will get excited about. Tempo-wise, they're also a strange and unusual creature and not always in a good way, either.

In a way, Disembowelment makes me think of Winter. Both were early doom/death metal bands that took the style to the next level and couldn’t resist plodding along from time to time; but whereas Winter played around with Celtic Frost-esque characteristics, Disembowelment have three sides to them and are a slightly more exciting band. There is the death metal persona that expresses its gruesome desires through prominent blastbeats and sickening waves of tremolo riffs that would make even the most straightforward death metal bands envious. You don’t even need to dive deep into Transcendence into the Peripheral to find the evidence; because that very first riff that you’ll encounter proves that Disembowelment are capable of summoning these oppressive riffs that will scar you physically and mentally.

Just like Winter, you end up with these so-so slower bits and as far as I know, doom/death metal isn’t supposed to be an empty guitar chug contest, yet far too often, Disembowelment release these tasteless sections that go nowhere, provide no emotional effects and occasionally, even last for minutes. ‘Excoriate’ may the shortest metallic track on the record, but even here, the band falls into this trap of lazy riff writing and there’s simply no excuse for it. Besides the fast-paced moments of vicious hatred, there are also some non-metallic moments that Disembowelment rely on. The Dead Can Dance-esque chants of ‘Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory’ are quite a surreal experience and The Cocteau Twins-esque ‘Nightside of Eden’ provides a bigger surprise of serene imagery and ethereal joy.

Although Disembowelment are capable of feeding the most gruesome imagination, the band struggles to write completely deranged songs. Whereas the vocals bring to mind some mysterious thing that you’re best off not getting close to - thanks to the beasty growls that have an incoherent quality to them and shrieks of eternal torture, they sometimes match with plain guitar chugging that breaks momentum of these tunes. The aforementioned ‘Excoriate’ is easily the best example of this, but it’s certainly not the only one. ‘A Burial at Ornans’ must have been the result of an uninspired jam session, as it’s incredibly uneven. With an extremely slow buildup that could you easily make you fall asleep, the track promises to be completely filler material. Yet, followed by some superior speedier riffs that must have escaped from your most messed up nightmares, signs of salvation eventually start to show around the seven minute mark. Worst of the bunch, ‘Cerulean Transience of All my Imagined Shores’ stays in the spooky ambient territory and while the vocals remain as impressive as ever, it’s not until that haunting climax where things get moderately exciting.

While I find it tempting to praise Transcendence into the Peripheral for just its atmosphere, there are songs that sound absolutely superior to everything else. ‘Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory’ shows that Disembowelment are capable of building something monolithic and otherworldly. Starting off with those Dead Can Dance-esque chants set the stage, but instead of predictable chugging, you end up with these sledgehammering riffs that could break you on a spiritual and emotional level… before speeding the hell up with disorientating effects. ‘The Spirits of the Tall Hills’ follows almost the same routine. Clean guitars provide a worthy addition here and if you’re expecting cute acoustic sections to distract you from the record’s mentally disgusting take, Disembowelment will gladly show otherwise. Claustrophobic blastbeats overlap with frightening cleaner sections, inhumane vocal cries and a wall of unhinged distortion and by the time that another massive death metal riff knocks around the corner to knock you unconscious, you know that you’re in for something seriously incredible.

While the rest remains far more inconsistent, the entire ride is worth to experience nonetheless. You could think of many labels to describe Transcendence into the Peripheral - as far as I'm concerned, I'll sum the record up as a surreal mixed bag.

Oh, Australia, the place where their military literally lost to a bunch of birds, is also home to some of the weirdest metal bands to date. From the avant-garde approach of Portal to the cybernetic dystopian sounds of The Berzerker, there is Disembowelment (diSEMBOWELMENT?), who I think was one of the pioneers of what we know as funeral doom metal today, with the extremely down-tempo sections, lyrics about death and depression, and the haunting growls that are the staple of funeral doom today. The band lived a short life (4 years), but before they folded, they released this gem named Transencdence Into The Peripheral. Back in 1993, no one really gave a damn about this album due to how unorthodox it was even for a death/doom album, and now it is vindicated by history, with many fans of death/doom in the 2010s finally seeing this album for what it truly is: a masterpiece ahead of its time.

Like all death/doom albums, this one requires a lot of patience and perseverance to sit through. Being the direct precursor to what we know as funeral doom metal today definitely contributes to that. But unlike most death/doom albums, this one in particular stood out among its peers for the sheer brutality and how utterly despair-inducing it can be; you can describe this as Into Darkness on crack, and it will not be until Hatred For Mankind that another album manages to match Transcendence in despair and brutality, but while Hatred did so with the crutch of misanthropy, evil, and serial killers, Transcendence managed to accomplish this herculean task without it and only with an atmosphere of death, depression, and abstract themes. The instruments also helped establish the feeling that this is not like other death/doom albums, from the ethereal and echo-y sounding death growls that sound like they came from Hell itself and are travelling up the caverns to the listener, to the guitars that create a despair-inducing wall of noise, and the brutality of the music when it decides to speed up; it manages to one-up most brutal death metal bands in musical brutality due to the extremely slow proto-funeral doom sections that came before it. Never underestimate the power of contrast, folks. Speaking of contrast, another one here is the guitars and vocals that paint the soundscape of a desolate hellscape of death and doom. The drums here are very unpredictable and have an unstable approach; the drummer never stays in one pattern for too long, never letting the listener get complacent. In a way, this makes the album even more unsettling, soul-crushing, and exhausting to listen to, making the album a truly nightmarish experience to listen to and making the music even more inaccessible and draining. If Hatred For Mankind is defined by its evil and hateful sound, then this album is defined by its hopeless and cavernous sound.

Even the album art is unorthodox and forgoes any bit of darkness and shock imagery. Instead of a desolate warzone (Into Darkness), ghastly beasts (Relics of the Dead), or even gory abortions (Hatred for Mankind), this album just puts a red background with the album name and band logo on it, oddly similar to what At The Gates did with their debut. Which sells the theme of darkness and death even more because, in a vacuum, the red background looks eerily like hellfire, which indicates that the listener is descending into the depths of Hell. But the lyrics here indicate the opposite, with the last two songs describing a person dying and being brought into paradise, which is pretty weird for something that would inspire funeral doom and even some DSBM projects a decade later.

While many death/doom albums only gave me a feeling of total desolation and despair, nothing else really unsettled me like this album. I felt nothing but total darkness and complete fear from this album. This album is a point of reference for just how unsettling death metal can be. With its creative use of atmosphere and contrast, it manages to create something darker, torturous, and more terrifying, just like a diSEMBOWELMENT of your cranium by musical darkness and brutality.

Disembowelment was a death/doom metal band from Melbourne that revolutionized the genre in many ways. The genre would begin to take shape in the very early 90s where bands like Winter, Paradise Lost, and even Autopsy to an extend would lay the groundworks for killer releases. However, many of those bands either died very early or moved onto a different direction later on in their careers. While the same can be said for Disembowelment, having only been active for just four years, the legacy that it left behind in its only studio album "Transcendence into the Peripheral" is one that people still reminisce to this day.

From the first track "The Tree of Life and Death", we can already tell that this album's gonna be different from most other death/doom releases at the time with its production. The whole thing sounds spacey and desolate, with the echo and grounded effects only helping build and overall cavernous and transcendental sound. This, in turn, ends up affecting the instruments in a good way. The guitar riffs sound more rough and extreme with the vast atmosphere, and further adds to the devastating atmosphere with their deep-tuned riffs. The drumming is also very bleak and crushing, with its loud booms and cymbals adding in more power and extremity in the landscape. The bass play is also extremely deep, and is excellent at laying down a thick and hard foundation within the track. Together, all of these instruments create an atmosphere of despair, torture, and agony that is only exaggerated with the more slower moments, where the guitars play some crushing doom riffs. And keep in mind, the album's just getting started. As it progresses, we get a mix of tracks like "Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory" with a more melancholic and funeral-like tone, or even tracks like "Nightside of Eden" that break the death/doom tone with a beautiful acoustic guitar that brings in a tone of nightly wonders. Each track includes some excellent instrumentals that are only improved from the cavernous atmosphere, and they feel connected to one overarching story that you have to hear all the way through.

As for the vocals, they're also just as devastating. Renato Gallina has done vocals for the band since day one, and in this albums, his vocals are better than ever. In the track "A Burial at Ornans" for instance, Gallina utilizes deep growls that have an echo effect and drag on for as long as possible. Not only does this fit well to the doom guitars and slow drums, but it also only further enhances the bare and dismal atmosphere. And in the more faster moments of the albums, Gallina's growls sound more painful and even includes a shriek, which adds to the anxious tone of the part. I'd also like to point out I'da's vocals in "Nightside of Eden", as she uses a narrative voice that also serves as a nice break to the growls. Just like the instruments, Gallina's vocal performance is ravaged with torturous growls and shrieks that only strengthen the overall atmosphere.

And of course, no death/doom masterpiece is complete without some depressing lyrics to go with it. The lyrics on this album not only sound terrible, but they also include a spiritual tone in them. Take the lyrics to "The Spirits of the Tall Hills" for instance, where this verse quotes:

The hypnotised sound of Boetian harps, created by the force of spirits,
The faraway landsno longer seem so distant,
Nirvanaesque serenity as the hills become unclouded,
The spirits embrace my soul,
As I envision the neutral spectrum before me,
The harp echoes and echoes and... my wings take me to the bewilderment.

Here, the protagonist appears to be dying, as they describe being taken upon by spirits from the hills. The overall songwriting style takes on a poetic Gothic approach given their emphasis on details and dark themes, which in turn makes the story all the more pessimistic in the afterlife. Furthermore, These lyrics are perfect for this album, as with the melancholic death/doom riffs and deep growls, the themes of death and sadness is only amplified to a point where you can't help but feel bad for the protagonist. The lyrics are beautifully written on this album, and this specific death/doom style only pushes the depressing themes further.

With just seven tracks lasting almost an hour in total, "Transcendence into the Peripheral" surely does push the envelope in how extreme death/doom can go. Instead of being loud and abrasive, it goes for a more slower and cavernous turn alongside some agonized vocals and Gothic lyrics to create a devastating death/doom that remains a classic to this day. If you haven't listened to this album yet, then now's a good time to seek the Tree of Life and Death.

Compared to the European or American scene, this Australian one is definitely less numerous in terms of extreme bands, but quite often, when you come across one, you come across an absolute gem; a band that surprises with something extraordinary and which is difficult to clearly assign somewhere. One of such revelations was Disembowelment, a death/doom (sometimes even funeral) band, which was distinguished by a completely different and unconventional approach to this style - so much that they found their followers much years later. The peak attainment of these Australians, i.e. "Transcendence Into The Peripheral", was released relatively soon after the formation of the band, in 1993. It was then that one of the best climatic albums in the extreme ever saw the light of day.

Death/doom according to Disembowelment is a portion of unusual music, where extreme sounds and doomy slow tempos are mixed with melancholic climates and psychedelic atmosphere. On the one hand, Renato Gallina's band does not go away from death metal riffing (and the guitars are like a razor!), blasting, devastating with double bass or low growl, but on the other hand, there is no shortage of expressive throat ripping (with an interesting reverb effect like straight from the well), hypnotic inserts in the form of clean guitars or softer melodies. The uniqueness of this combination is emphasized by "Your Prophetic Throne Of Ivory" (with an absolutely brilliant, mournful singing at the beginning/end), "Cerulean Transience Of All My Imagined Shores" (including the strongest grim climate), "A Burial At Ornans" (with the greatest funeral heaviness), "Excoriate" (the shortest of the normal songs and the strongest in blasting), "The Tree Of Life And Death" (with a great intertwining between medium tempos and slower ones) or "The Spirits Of The Tall Hills" (with a very oppressive, gloomy atmosphere). In this way, in the context of the biggest pluses...the whole tracklist comes to mind! In fact, even the interlude "Nightside Of Eden" makes a not worse impression and perfectly turns up the general, unreal atmosphere.

Even though "Transcendence Into The Peripheral" gained the status of a cult much later (after the band broke up), currently, this music is a death/doom metal monolith, where the proportions of heaviness and grinding in slow tempos are perfectly balanced with melancholy and twisted atmosphere. The Australians from Disembowelment with their only longplay proved that such a very unusual mix is absolutely right and can attract you for many hours. Plus, it's a must-have for those who think My Dying Bride lacks brutality, Autopsy climate and The Cure impact.

Originally on A bit of subjectivism...in metal

We all know that doom metal is a genre that is already complicated in itself and that each album that has this label stamped is a guarantee that anyone who dares to deal with its art will be on an agonizing journey at an asthmatic crawl towards the depths of his perdition, in which he must put all his senses to correctly discern what is cooking on a musical level. Now, what happens when the already tough formula is fused with another genre of take weapons like death metal and taken to almost unbearable extremes? The answer: “Transcendence Into the Peripheral” by Disembowelment. To speak of the first and only LP by Melbourne-born Australians is to speak of a work that for obvious reasons rises as absolute cult material. Pioneering work in what refers to the so-called funeral doom and of course, a monumental work of death / doom ominous and suffocating to the fullest. "Transcendence Into the Peripheral" is very much "Transcendence Into the Peripheral." Disembowelment, formed in 1989, released the album that concerns us under the aegis of Relapse Records in 1993, at which time the death / doom scene was on fire, with people like Cathedral, Paradise Lost, Anathema, My Dying Bride (among others ), leading the top. With this and with many other things, "Transcendence Into the Peripheral" deserves to be classified as a classic with all the laws.

The truth is that Disembowelment are basically the most painful depression made music. "Transcendence Into The Peripheral" (like the first demos and the 1992 EP "Dusk") is a colossal work to which the word "suffocating" does little justice. And it is that here what he expects are almost 60 minutes of pure agony, because not even that delicate beauty that takes the name of "Nightside of Eden" gets rid of that aura of despair and suffering that emanates from the rest of the songs. The lyrics, of a gothic and poetic nature, are far from touching themes that the name of the band may suggest, and in their darkness and mysticism they are like a glove to what is cooked musically. In this aspect, the aforementioned development at an asthmatic crawl is 90% of the disc, but it is that even in its eventual accelerations, far from fading, the unbreathable rotting environment remains. Moreover, it could be said that it intensifies, because the first thing that comes to mind in the faster parts is nothing other than the very dense Incantation.

If the cover letter is a slow and agonizing grip on the balls, what “Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory” produces is no longer conveyed in words. Here, hand in hand with Gallina's wailing (that sounded strange but it's not my fault, eh!) And the ghostly plucking on the six strings, the Australians constitute an atmosphere that navigates between the grotesque, and in their own way, beautiful, that does not stop sinking into the depths of the abyss, incidentally, passing through the eggs any conventionalism there has been and will be. "Excoriate", shorter than its predecessors, shows no intention of giving anything close to a breather. Instead there is a great contrast with the aforementioned "Nightside of Eden", one of the most beautiful things that I had the pleasure of listening to. Yes, she is very pretty, although hey, asshole !, the incessant darkness and the nightmarish atmosphere is still there stalking us, poor mortals. For more evidence, pay attention to the hopeless lyrics, which, however, is delicately recited by a beautiful and whispering female voice, constituting a perfect balance between beauty and darkness that surely puts the heart in a fist to any monstrosity that swarms on earth.

However, with all that has been said above, when one comes across filth the size of “A Burial At Ornans”, one realizes that “Nightside of Eden” was nothing more than a mirage to lower our guard before the arrival of such a monstrosity. I'll make it easy: 15 minutes of suffering is what awaits the listener. From its inception, in which Australians use the same strategy as their Cathedral colleagues in "Ebony Tears" to make us shit bricks, "A Burial At Ornans" has come to bear witness to an indisputable truth: anyone who comes to us with something like "A my Disembowelment they entered me the first time "is nothing more than a fucking liar and little else. The almost 15 minutes that make up this number basically represent a summary of what Disembowelment is, agonizing and tortuous music to which one not only listens, but also suffers it in a twisted practice of musical masochism. Even with all this, it is worth underlining something: the music that sounds here is very simple. Scary, chilling, but simple. Yet another example of the not-so-easy art of "do more with less" in which only certain highly talented people tend to do well. With this, to say that the cover in its "dark simplicity" is played 200% according to what is cooked at the musical level. I'm not going to put coordinates indicating the best moments and such, because this is majestic in its entirety and there is no better point than another, although yes, what appears in the final section is an absolute nightmare to be taken to the grave. Very big.

The no less impressive “The Spirits of the Tall Hills” and “Cerulean Transience of All My Imagined Shores” (the latter, along with the aforementioned “The Tree of Life and Death” and “A Burial At Ormans”, rescues from the EP “ Dusk ”) in all their apocalyptic nature (from the anthology the final section of“ Cerulean… ”) they circulate slowly but surely like their sisters, crawling meditatively in the mud and occasionally convulsing -as already mentioned- in the purest style of some Incantation.

After several reviews from top to bottom one is able to truly understand the majesty and talent that the gentlemen of Disembowelment, (more specifically Renato Gallina, among other things, designer of the classic Immolation logo) carry with them. What is said is that "Transcendence Into the Peripheral" is pure suffering. Every aspect both in music and in the production does nothing more than give more power to what evokes a huge slimy and filthy beast that crawls in slow motion, devouring everything in its path. Therefore, the production (with Doug Sanders and Dave Shirk behind the controls), is something else that would give enough to talk about, but I will summarize it in this: every slimy and creeping note that Jason Kells and Renato Gallina's guitars shoot, each howl of this (either Donald Duck or a cookie monster about to vomit), each hit on Paul Mazziota's drums, falls like a thousand-ton stone ball on our skull. Anyway, everything, absolutely everything, is made to be crushing and ruthless. Life is not the same after hearing something like "Transcendence Into the Peripheral", that I can assure you. I repeat: very large.

In short, a specimen of fucking cult by a band that in its short life (only four years) left an indelible mark on the underground.

Certainly not an album you can (or frankly should) listen to multiple times in any given day. If you find yourself playing this kind of thing over and over again, you're either manically depressed or will soon find the sight of a noose oddly inviting. Even for this review, I listened to the album just a single time from start to finish and took a few days to sort through my thoughts.

I think what works so well for an album like "Transcendence Into the Peripheral" is how perfectly strange it feels. Many musicians work rigorously to master their craft and find innovative ways of standing out from their contemporaries, but the result can often be jarring, annoying, or downright indigestible. Tropes like odd time signatures, unpredictable arrangements, bizarre lyrical content and equally alien vocal delivery began to pop up across the global underground extreme metal community in the early 1990's as bands effortlessly worked to distinguish their music from the oceans of standard-sounding material spewing forth like bile from a cracked sewage-plant pipeline. By 1993 the world had bands like Atheist, Cynic, Dan Swanö's Edge of Sanity and far more obscure project Pan.Thy.Monium; Gorguts had already written the bulk of their dissonant masterpeice, "Obscura", as a philosophical response to the commercialization and mediocrity that had crept its way into the death metal catacombs. Things were clearly progressing into far weirder, more diverse and less hinged territories and it was becoming increasingly challenging for rising young talents to stand out.

The ways in which diSEMBOWELMENT set themselves apart can be broken down into two categories: First, aesthetics. No other death metal band at the time would have dared, let alone thought, to adorn their album covers and t-shirts with a logo that looks like it belongs to an art exhibit at the Guggenheim in 2005. Stare at it until you see a face and you'll see what I mean. Even the stylizing of their name, with "sembowelment" in capitalized letters is a small yet significant tool that estranges them from the others. Lastly is, of course, the album artwork. Much like At The Gates had done with their debut just a year earlier, diSEMBOWELMENT rejects the comical gore and slasher-film imagery of their peers for plain assortments of colors; it is the type of artwork that forces your imagination to fill in the empty spaces on its own, guided solely by the music contained within.

Second is, of course, the sound. This brutally slow, trudging style of death metal was by no means pioneering, as bands like Autopsy, Winter and Cathedral had already played around with blending death and doom metal into one cohesive sound, but I would argue that none of those bands reached quite the same level of utter despair, isolation, and hopelessness in a way that "Transcendence..." does. This is an album that radiates depression, painting landscapes of flowing red rivers, dead trees, blackened earth, and grey skin with its rich atmosphere. While the guitars and vocals achieve a lot in becoming layers for the atmosphere to build off of, nothing about them blew me away. The drumming, however, is absolutely sensational on this album. I found myself eager to hear what kind of off-kilter patterns Paul Mazziotta would come up with next, and as a rule he never sticks to one pattern long enough to feel comfortable playing it. This lends a wonderful juxtaposition to the album's overall composition: while your mind yearns to lose itself within its warmth-radiating melodies, it is repeatedly hammered and pulverized by the these short bursts of blasting, tumbling, and jackhammers coming from the kit. There are also rare moments of very somber acoustic passages like Nightside of Eden, which offer some much-needed reprieve from the otherwise exhausting barrage of heart-tearing, soul-crushing music. How appropriate to place the most heartwarming piece of music on the album just before fourteen-and-a-half minutes of a trench-crawling descent into the closest thing to madness you can find outside of a straight jacket (A Burial at Ornans).

Whereas other great death/doom albums of the era leave me feeling reflective of past times, introspective at my own faults and weaknesses, or just emotionally drained, "Transcendence..." is the only one that comes remotely close to inciting any actual feelings of pain when I listen to it. Not physical, of course, but almost like a mental carving across the skin and figurative drawing of blood. It is one of the most aptly named albums of all time, given how far off the beaten path and dangerously close to the frayed ends of sanity it will take its listeners. It is an album that can change your life if you're willing to spend the time with it; in order to feel its full effects, you'll need to allow a full immersion through the auditory experience. So go find a copy of this somewhere, plug in some headphones, and prepare to embark on a journey unlike anything you've ever experienced before.

When it comes to listening to death metal music, I can be very picky on how I want my death metal to be. As a fan of death's first three albums, I liked death metal that not only sounded super heavy, aggressive, and fast, but I look for something that really sounded evil. I never liked Cannibal Corpse because I was not into the blast beats, the vocals, and the themes that they discuss about. Most of the death metal of the late 1980s felt like I didn't get into it unless it was Obituary or Death. However, where I find the most purest and most evil sounding death metal can be found in death metal's darkest territory called death-doom. Due to my love of gothic metal, I got into this style of music mainly because I wanted to find something that sounded creepy/scary, because prior to listening to death-doom believe it or not, the creepiest album I had heard was Korn's self-titled album. Knowing the many bands in the death-doom scene I got into that were slow and heavy, they try to sound creepy as well. Until I discover what would be one of the greatest, and arguably creepiest sounding death metal/overall metal album I've ever heard was this album "Transcendence into the Peripheral' by Australian band Disembowelment.

Disembowelment are kind of a mysterious band because they had only released one album, and from doing research, have never played live until two of its members formed a tribute band and played songs off of 'Transcendence into the Peripheral' 20 years later. I got into Disembowelment because I wanted to get into more death-doom because I crave heavy, slow, and downright creepy music, and at the same time wanting to hear something that has sinister death-doom elements. 'Transcendence into the Peripheral' does just that and became a very genre defining album as well as becoming one of my all time favorite death metal/doom metal albums. Disembowelment put all of their influences and effort into just one album and made it to what I would call one of the scariest and darkest albums I've ever heard. It was not a cheesy death metal record talking about satanism or death (one out of seven of the tracks talks about death), but it talks about different topics that is not usually heard in death metal. Every song was amazing and very easy to listen to over and over again.

'Transcendence into the Peripheral' has some of the typical elements of death-doom, but went to further extremes and total darkness. I was skeptical at the time to hear that this death-doom record had fast blast beats because that is something I never heard in the genre at all. Unlike what Cannibal Corpse does with their blast beats, Disembowelment's blast beats gives an echo sound that makes the album sound like its being recorded in a dungeon. Of course it has a lot of slow and simple drum sounds, but it fits in perfectly to the point that it gives the listener the sensation to slowly bang their head. The album's slower parts gives disembowelment one reason why they are considered a pioneering force in funeral doom music. In 'The Tree of Life and Death', the middle of the song has a slow part where it included church bells from what I can assume, which is the best part of the song. 'A Burial At Ornans' is one of the epitomes of what people can assume is a proto-funeral doom song. Its fourteen minutes long, it has that super slow and heavy rhythm to it, where it only speeds up four minutes into the song. However, when comparing this song to other funeral doom acts that would come after this, Disembowelments take on this super slow music is disturbing and creepy, and the vocal approach makes it extremely more dark and disturbing. 'Transcendence into the Peripheral' makes me want to hear blast beats in death-doom music and the rhythms for this album is done perfectly to appeal to doom and death metal fans as well as fans of slower metal music.

One of my all time favorite elements included in 'Transcendence into the Peripheral' is guitar tones heard from both directions. The melodic side of the guitar caught my ear because I had never heard something so atmospheric from a guitar in death-doom and probably all of metal. When I showed my friend on what that guitar effect was, he told me it was a type of reverb. The reverb sounds are the best part of the album especially from the tracks 'Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory', 'The Spirit of the Tall Hills', and 'Cerulean Transience of All My Imagined Shores.' It adds that incredible dark atmosphere and makes it sound haunting and gives that echo sound to the music. The guitars were out of tune of the song, but does not mean it was horrible, it was the point in order for the album to sound more creepy especially in 'Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory.' When four minutes have passed in the song, the next thirty-six seconds sound very disoriented and creepy where it gives the listener the image of being chased by a serial killer for example. The distortion side of the guitars are also great. The distortion is heavy and it gives the album its death metal side which helps balance the atmospheric and dark sounds that are heard in the entire album. 'Transcendence into the Peripheral' gives guitar sounds that have never been heard in death-doom and offers a lot of original sounds that sound so creepy that it makes the band Winter sound like a cream puff band.

From an album like 'Transcendence into the Peripheral' and a band called Disembowelment one could imagine that the band talks a lot about death and gore that can act as a slower heavier version of Cannibal Corpse. However, 'Transcendence into the Peripheral' isn't talking about any of these topics. As I mentioned before, only one song talks about death/gore, the rest is something I can't even describe. I'll just give an example on how fantastic the Lyrical Content is.

"The sound of the blue, an eternity of complete aquiescence,
I cannot move, nor do I need to, for it is enough to lie on the cliff
And become entrapped in a world of escapism and peace,
Cerulean transience of all my imagined shores,
A bird of the ocean perches before me
And lets out a shriek which transcends me back,
Back to where I write,
And the calm breeze continues to enter my peripheral"

The lyrics in 'Transcendence into the Peripheral' are astonishing and skillful. It sounds very sophisticated. It has a lot of mysterious lines from most of the songs that make it unique and different from other band's writing about either death or melancholic topics. The one song where I can understand the lyrics is the dark ambient song 'Nightside of Eden' where it talks about people being stubborn and careless with what I would assume other people's misery. I also like how a female is reading these lyrics out loud with an echo sound, it makes the song more chilling then it already is. When it comes to vocal approach, this had me comparing Disembowelment to Cannibal Corpse because it has that very deep guttural growls that cannot be understood unless the person is reading lyrics. Despite that, it adds more darkness and again its death metal sound to balance the album. The lyrical content combined with the guttural vocals makes it a very unusual combination when anyone thinks about it, but this album does it right and gets extra points for originality.

I was at first skeptical about listening to 'Transcendence into the Peripheral' because of the many blast beats heard and its death metal guttural vocals that again sounds like Cannibal Corpse, but it will probably go down as one of the greatest works of death metal I will ever hear. The album had a lot of Originality and diversity that it will stand out as one of the most defining death-doom albums of all time. Out of all the death-doom bands I have heard (even from my favorite bands Anathema and My Dying Bride), Disembowelment's torture and anger in this album sound more authentic and lean more to the death metal side then to the doom metal side. The album is so creepy that it needs its own horror movie. It's dark atmosphere, ambience, and use of reverb has made me inspired to do something creepy even when I'm just playing gothic metal music. 'Transcendence into the Peripheral' will remain my all time favorite death metal, doom metal, and death-doom album. I wish Disembowelment made more albums...

As I have announced in my review for the sole Infester album, the final part of my ten part series on ten of the best metal albums of all time will be another album that surely took its sweet time to fully reveal its full quality to me, and - strangely enough - it is another album that was to remain its band's only. Perhaps bands like these - consciously or subconsciously - take the axiom of quitting when you're ahead to its natural conclusion upon discovering their debuts could not be improved upon in any way? Disembowelment's debut Transcendence into the Peripheral at least has been influential enough to have been tried to be copied, continued or improved upon by other bands - including one with two people who played on this album - and never has been surpassed, matched or even closely approached in quality or impact. It remains to this day a monument with a difficulty of ascent to its summit on par with scaling both Everest and K2 in one day. It is therefore honourable that Disembowelment themselves decided to forego an inevitably inferior sophomore that could have been the band's Mortal Throne of Nazarene at most - a different approach resulting in a truly great album that nonetheless remains in the colossal shadow of its predecessor, unable to make anywhere near the same mark. Instead, Transcendence into the Peripheral is what it is: Something that can only be achieved once in a lifetime, and a freak occurence that can never be repeated. Something we need to be glad it manifested at all for how it enriched the genre and the life of its listeners.

I'd say most of us who first listened to this album previously encountered the reputation that precedes it, the monumental status it has in the most extreme sub-styles of doom metal and the many times it is cited as a major influence by funeral doom metal bands, so, as if anticipating its future reputation, the band could not have chosen a more delightfully surprising way to open it than a buzzing grindcore riff soon joined by an unhinged blast beat. Interestingly, it's almost identical to how Pestilence's Consuming Impulse and Benediction's Transcend the Rubicon start out. If one bored day you are so inclined, compare the three albums' opening riffs, it's uncanny. While those two bands however stay right at where they start out, Disembowelment only dwell on the thought for a moment before going into an unnerving tremolo lead that even in today's era of dissonant black metal trends doesn't seem safe for a metal band to play. You won't get much time to wonder about the aesthetic choice however as the band soon after drastically shifts the mood again by slowing the speed to a near halt. First two or three minutes into the album and you know it's not going to be the easiest ride.

The atmosphere Disembowelment create is often disturbing. When they crawl at a snail's speed they don't envelop you in that comforting warmth of sorrow you'd expect from funeral doom staples like Skepticism or Evoken, but paint a bleak, nihilistic picture reminiscent of the claustrophobia of being lost in a dark environment with no point of reference or method of orientation to guide you to a way out. The recurrent reverbed clean notes reinforce this helpless feeling - you are somewhere alone in this dark, cold place with no apparent escape, with a haunting presence looming over you like a permanent threat. You feel you need to run, but you have no way of knowing in which direction, you are lost, don't know where to go, but cannot stay where you are. The presence sporadically manifests itself in the band unexpectedly erupting into one of their otherworldly grinding frenzies, to remind you whenever you might develop a sense of safety that the threat is always near, that there is mortal danger around you ready to strike at any moment, that you need to run, just to end up in a place that is just like the place you were before you ran. It's almost like Slenderman to those of us who are unfortunately not oblivious to silly internet memes, except darker and unsettlingly less silly.

The irony is not only the contrast to the album's blissful esoteric, almost new age titles, but that this blissful esoteric feeling is actually also present all through the album. That for all the haunting threat, all the fear and all the paranoia, you actually feel like you are in a higher, more exalted, transcendental state that one feels that one should aspire to. Like a bleak nirvana to ascend to from our mundane existence of celebrations, love and beauty. An escape from the meaningless distractions of life to the higher existential state of pure darkness and discomfort. Perhaps this album is the audial meditative instruction to a new, nihilistic form of anti-Buddhism.

You can gather from the above descriptions why this album took a long time to fully make it into my mental collection of highly venerated albums. It's an unsettling and unnerving experience. And open every listen, every one of the hundreds of times I listened to it, it becomes clear how and why this can never be replicated or matched, because it requires a special kind of inspiration that can only exist for but one fleeting moment. The right people coming together at the right time having just the right thoughts and feelings, a chance constellation so unlikely that we must be eternally thankful to the fates of the universe for its freak occurence. And to those willing to argue that metal may be the best of all music genres of history so far, this album can be a strong argument, because "masterpiece" does not even begin to describe its power and glory.

Back in the days before My Dying Bride and Anathema even existed, there was a two-piece grind band in Melbourne, Australia called Bacteria that decided after a little while to combine what they were doing with some things that were completely different. As a result of this, one of metal's most truly amazing bands came to be.

Perhaps more than any other band, diSEMBOWELMENT is the true embodiment of crushing, soul-scarring doom. Their combination of epic, glacially-paced riffs, fuzzy, post-rock sonic architecture, mournful, tortured vocal atmospherics and blast beat violence was a truly unique recipe that has since been mirrored and echoed across the metal sphere but rarely as impressively or as compulsively.

Transcendence Into the Peripheral is diSEMBOWELMENT's only full-length release, a culmination of their experimental technique that remains untarnished due to the band's decision to split not long after it was released, and thereby ensuring a legacy that could not be sullied by an attempt to match or surpass it.

With a mere seven tracks stretching the running time to almost an hour, Transcendence Into the Peripheral is neither an album for the faint-of-heart nor the attention-deficient. Psycroptic and Dillinger Escape Plan squeeze more riffs into one song than diSEMBOWELMENT use on this entire album, but the dark, brooding introspection and mystical reflection conjured by the languid drone of a track like "A Burial at Ornans" is the exact and diametric opposite of the shock and awe tactics of those bands.

The album opens with "The Tree of Life and Death", a strange combination of grind, death and ambience that was the inspiration for the Alchemist track "Soul Return" that came out two years later. diSEMBOWELMENT's minimalist style is perfectly represented here. Incredibly slow riffs reverberate forever until an occasional vicious blastbeat or grind section comes from out of nowhere and then subside again almost immediately for a truly haunting atmospheric section to take its place. Vocals ooze out of the distance as a variety of low, growling rumbles, whispers, shouts and chants that only accentuate the band's stark aura of dismal gloom. That's just the first track. "Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory" is bleaker still, with a soul-withering atmosphere almost painful to endure. The gentle acoustics of "Nightside of Eden" belie the abyssic despair of its spoken-word poetry as what at first seems like a lighthouse of hope is merely a corpse-light amidst further gloom.

Then diSEMBOWELMENT rolls out the depressing triumph of "A Burial at Ornans", a hope-crushing fourteen-minute colossus so slow the main riff drones on for almost a minute and a half. This track is a genuinely remarkable achievement, the centrepiece of the album's agonising existential journey, a journey completed by "Cerulean Transcience of All My Imagined Shores" that slowly lifts the listener up from the depths of mortal despair and through a gateway to ethereal existence.

Transcendence Into the Peripheral is precisely as its title suggests, the most complete musical metaphor for spiritual enlightenment thus far conceived and an unassailable masterpiece never to be bettered.

Originally written for Pyromusic.net

Australia, sweet Australia. Delivering the goods to unsuspecting listeners... and yes, though these goods are relatively scarce, one can always groove along to top acts such as Atlantics, Lubricated Goat, and last but not least, Disembowelment, aka Big D (which could serve as a perfect double entendre). Disembowelment's Transcendence promises a soothing ambiance and a sensuality overload that will make your blood boil - see that cover? Yeah, just get closer to it. If you are dating a bipolar snail, this album IS the platter of choice for wooing his/her horns.

The introduction to Big D's sonic universe is more than subtle. That means it starts like WHAMO! with a really agitated rhythm that would bring Katharsis' less polished moments to my mind, then morphs into sloppily executed death metal, then blows right into the stratosphere with grindcore blasts accompanied by a clean guitar melody that sounds like lifted from the lost X-Files soundtrack. It all comes to a halt when the guys really get into the meat of this record - the doom and gloom, perfectly expressed through the really pounding drum sound. Well, I wish that I could've said the same about the mean sounding, low key distorted riffs that are oh so present on this record, but that would've made me a liar. They are mean, low key, distorted, but they are quite difficult to make out. The general approach on this album is very clear: picture Swans' bleakest soundscapes (similar intent, yet unfortunately diluted sonic strength) meeting Napalm Death on a mellow evening gig and being infused with Cocteau Twins' lilting guitar melodies. Of course, the lilting melodies are there only to stress the life-affirming nature of this record, folks.

Though track by track reviews are not always the best way to go (like, try doing a track by track review for a Anal Cunt compilation), this album has only 7 tunes, and they can all be subjected to a pretty neato SWOT analysis.
The opener "The Tree of Life and Death" pretty much sums it up, at least in principle, as I've said before, and it doesn't give a great image. Fact is, the drummer likes varying tempos and gets spazzed out whenever he feels like doing it, throwing in pedal fills and rhythmic blurbs, and entering the death metal stallion mode just when you were ready to reach ecstasy, or reach for the damn cup of coffee. Too bad that he doesn't always sound as if he actually IS there - not that he'd be lifeless, but he doesn't seem to have a brain. Take "Excoriate", for example, bringing the heat in the city with an obnoxious bash-bash-bash start-stop rhythm that doesn't quite fit neither into death metal nor into grindcore, but fits perfectly into the "nutty kid making his dad's drum kit cry" category. After the annoyingly poor blastbeat ends, the mid-section is well executed with its slowly progressing electric wails of sorrow, yet they still come back with an oogah-boogah revenge worthy of the Muppets' Animal. "Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory", on the contrary, is so much more pleasant from a rhythmic standpoint, with tighter sounding drumming and an interesting mood transition, from Bethlehem-esque rumination to almost tropical (!?) and back to even lower depths of despair. The stark contrast between the doom crunch and the clean guitar is something to marvel at.

"A Burial At Ornans", aside from the tip of the hat to Courbet, manages to improve all the points where the album opener failed. A host of truly malevolent riffs (both slow and fast!), really low and ominous growls, fast sections that are perfectly placed within the song in order to make your spine softer than jelly, and a great doom song overall. And the riffs, again, they are audible and rise above the piss-poor fuzz that they are often reduced to, probably due to that heavy reverb. Sure, doom metal is not Jason Becker's playground, and one well chosen note, when repeated, can be more meaningful than an epic solo etc., but if you are going to play it that way, try make it count. Make yourself heard, champ! Growling the pudding out of your lungs is not the only goal. Though he does it with style, doesn't it. This vocalist is definitely in the top of growlers, a nervous ball of bowels that is as adept at subsonic gurgles as it is at throwing black metal hissy fits every once in a while. However, they made an exception for the interlude "Nightside of Eden", which sounds a lot like the Cocteau Twins with its drowsy melodies and feminine vocals, albeit darker. Imagine eating an apple in total obscurity near a really irritating chattering chick (it's a shame that one can't slap the stereo to make her shut up), while a devil prepares to shove a sword of flames up your ass. They're black flames, that's why you can't see 'em.

Coming really close to the end, "The Spirits of the Tall Hills" begins with a rather lengthy chiming introduction, tries to capitalize upon the melodies from "Your bla bla" and render them more ominous, and it fails at doing so. Not miserably, but I wonder if it really makes any difference - c'mon, even Nirvana's "Come As You Are" had a more imposing atmosphere. It just drags on and on with the usual plodding/fast formula, but the drummer shows quite an amazing jammy side, adding some salt and pepper to the vapidity. At last, he's really cooking.
As for "Cerulean Transience...", it is a nice ending to an otherwise rather flawed album. Oscillating between festive and menacing, driven by folk sounding themes during the first half, the song seems to gain strength especially thanks to the clean guitar riffs that become increasingly intense. It's hard to figure out whether the guitar is all by itself or if it is completed by some sort of bell, but it sure does the trick.

Can one person stay the same after going through this transcendence shiznit? What does this make you think of? What are its redeeming powers? If I were a less experienced listener, after passing through this whole album, I'd probably start writing poetry that would get nobody laid (like the song titles found here), but I shrugged and got back to the ole greats - Candlemass, Saint Vitus, Melvins, Boris and so on. Now I'm a guy that doesn't need any more Big D in his life.

In 1993 when death metal was still young, four guys from down under combined their past musical efforts in grindcore and death metal with ambient doom and forged it into one scary beast of an album. No one ever did something similar to this before and an entirely new genre was spawned here. Be prepared...

Right after the first seconds it becomes clear that this is not your usual 1993 death metal. The muddy, down-tuned guitars and bass droning back and forth between incomprehensible growls and the slow, but thunderous drums convincingly sound like this was recorded in a dark cave devoid of any sunlight...in which you are trapped now. Out of nothing, a faint, clean guitar is humming strange melodies of sadness and despair. It spends some light in this place, but soon it fades again and you are left in pure darkness. But the calm is not meant to last long. The guitars speed up, the drums start blasting, and something is following you. You are desperately running, exhausted, lost in this cave.

The instrumentation is typical for death metal: guitars, bass, drums, and vocals, but the way the band uses the instruments is often different from what other bands do. The huge amount of reverb applied to the entire recording turns the guitars and bass, which mostly play basic riffs, into droning noise that is the fundamentals of the recording. The drums vary from very slow doom rhythms to fast blast beats and give everything a shape and order, and the deep, slow and thus almost incomprehensible growls add a lot to the mood altogether. Only the occasionally appearing clean guitar adds some actual melody to the music, creating an interesting contrast to the death metal fundamental. The band does not play technical or complex at all, but I think this would only decrease the effect of the music.

Although the feeling of being chased in endlessly dark caves drags through the entire album, each of the seven songs has its own mood. While "Your Prophetic Throne Of Ivory" makes a lot of use of the clean guitars and "Nightside Of Eden" consists entirely of spoken word over said guitars, the fourteen and a half minute beast that is "A Burial At Ornans" is pure darkness. There is no light in this song...no hope, not even sadness. Just fear in its purest form. The last song, however, ends the album almost friendly and hopeful.

The songs themselves don't follow any constant structure and have no choruses or verses, so at first it can be hard to tell how the songs will evolve, but I think this makes them even more absorbing and fascinating because the listener is forced to listen attentively.

Definitely worth a mention are the lyrics. They are very poetic and seem to tell a mystical story about life and death. The imagery used is incredibly alive and absorbing. Reading the lyrics while listening really gives the music another dimension:


The winds brought in from the south coast replace
Such drainful inhabitance,
My eyelids voluntarily close as the blue horizon line takes shape,
Stretching out far beyond the sun,
The sound of the blue, an eternity of complete acquiescence,
I cannot move, nor do I need to, for it is enough to lie on the cliff
And become entrapped in a world of escapism and peace


The only minor issue I have are the sometimes similar-sounding riffs during the slower parts. Still, Disembowelment created something very creative and absolutely unique with "Transcendence Into The Peripheral". There is no instrumental wanking or showing off. Everything is meant to serve the atmosphere, which is incredibly dense and almost unparalleled in extreme metal.

Disembowelment - Death/doom metal from Australia. The final Australian band that I was going to give a chance to. Usually with Australian bands, there is always SOMETHING that I find overly annoying about them (musically), it's either the vocalist, guitarist, bassist, or drummer. Granted, there are bands with flawed musicians everywhere out there, I tend to veer clear of them since I tend to only look for the most elite in the scenes. Some may view this as a bit close-minded, but preference is preference. I don't tolerate sub-par musicians.

This band, however, are actually quite phenomenal when it comes to each instrument. Something that I find incredibly shocking is that the vocalist doesn't sound like a deathcore vocalist, since that's usually the sound I gather from most Australian vocalists in death metal. When it's not the vocalist, it's usually almost either the drummer or guitarist (occasionally the bassist is really boring and doesn't offer anything but rhythm support, but that can be overlooked if the riff is REALLY great). With Disembowelment, none of these issues are here (the vocalist does occasionally sound like he got his vocal style mixed up and starts sounding like he's auditioning for black metal, but it doesn't sound bad at all). There are some really great and fast passages on this album which heavily rival the slower segments. The only problem is, most of the tracks on the album consist of near epic-length tracks with three of them being over ten minutes long. There are two ways to do epic-length tracks: the good way, and the shitty, "what the hell are you doing?" way. Sadly, Disembowelment handle the latter.

Most of their music consists of tempos exceeding 260 bpms (odd for death/doom, right?) and off-time time signatures, it adds such an interesting edge to the genre which they're tackling. The problem is, they have about four minutes in every "epic-length" track consisting of the same riff over and over. Repetitiveness is okay with black metal when dealing with atmosphere, and death/doom is exactly the kind of genre which needs some atmosphere in it to succeed greatly, but when you go from those types of tempos straight to four minutes of slow repetitive riffs until the end of the track, it makes you literally hope for a faster section again just to wake you up.

The album for the most part remains this consistent throughout, not giving much variety to the pattern which I explained before with the "epics". There are some really excellent riffs and bass going on here, plus fantastic drumming. As I mentioned before, there was some strangeness with the vocalist, yet he was able to pull it off rather well. He offers a variety of vocalization to the album. It goes to everything from a brutal death metal vocal, to a black metal, to a classic death metal. It's really cool with his delivery, actually.

Honestly, this album's biggest downfall is the repetitive, uninteresting sections of the album. Sixty minutes of the same type of song pattern becomes almost a chore to listen to. Maybe I'll give this album a second chance in the future, but from my first impression, I do not like this. If they were to cut out those certain sections all together, this would probably be a very great underground gem of classic death metal.

An intensely ugly tremolo-picked riff begins the album. A single guitar riff that builds tension so rapidly that your insides will churn and you’ll feel as though your guts are being torn into by an unfathomable horror that only music so grisly could conjure. So ugly and so intense is this single riff that it ensures that Transcendence Into the Peripheral will be one of the most brutally ugly albums you’ll ever hear.

Soon the riff is accompanied by pounding death metal percussion and deep guttural growls. In a sense, it is almost typical of a death metal album to begin this way. But diSEMBOWELMENT is an entirely different entity. The song continues with its death metal grunts and punishing percussion until, suddenly, the album reveals its true nature. The percussion gradually slows down until it reaches a pace of cruel, pounding slowness. The riffs are no longer tremolo picked; they are churned out at a dirge-like pace with the utmost emphasis on punishing heaviness. This album is not a death metal album; indeed, it is a monstrous hybrid of death metal and doom metal. The combination of the two isn’t blended enough to constitute death/doom, as the tempos vary too often. All throughout the album, the music will constantly alternate between death metal blasts and doom metal dirges, with the latter being deployed more often. Does this effect work? Oh yes; to absolute perfection.

Certainly the band has more tricks up their sleeve aside from the down-tuned, distorted rhythms and maddening tempo shifts. The band indeed has a penchant for the unusual, displayed mostly by tracks such as “Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory” and “Spirit of the Tall Hills”. Ethereal clean guitar melodies are used prominently in these tracks. Rest assured, they do not detract from the primal brutality of the music. They create a haunted aura; leaving you alone in a vast wasteland of misery to dwell in. These leads are especially effective when combined with the death metal tempos. The album knows this, and pummels you with such at its leisure.

However I can pick no track as a standout, because the album flows so cohesively that individual songs don’t seem to matter. The one curious addition to the album is “Nightside at Eden”, which is an entirely clean song with female vocals, of all things! However, its intention is undoubtedly sinister, for it lulls you into a false sense of security which is soon destroyed by the crushing weight of “Burial at Ornans”, which hurls you back into a swamp of distorted violence to drown in. No ethereal clean melodies on this song; just good ‘ole fashioned brutality.

‘Tis a shame that this album turned out to be their swan song, as they disbanded soon after. Yet, their legacy lives on, for back in 1993, they created a metal masterpiece for all time, and its name is “Transcendence into the Peripheral”. For doom metal fans, this is a must-have, and the same goes for those who enjoy ugliness in their music.

Originally written for http://circleofdestruction.net

Those who are familiar with Australia and it's people will likely have heard of "the cultural cringe"- basically, it's a sense of shame over Australia's output in the arts. With the exception of one or two playwrights, the Chaser TV show, some aboriginal art and a couple of excellent punk/pub rock bands from the late 70's we haven't really released anything in any sort of medium that's internationally reknown**, except for stuff like Kylie Minogue,Jet and Neighbours- and dreck like this only increases the cultural cringe. I guess if you live in a wealthy, happy-go-lucky country (3rd on the UN's development index) with fantastic weather and amazing beaches then crafting some powerful, emotional art- or even vaguely funny TV shows- just really doesn't work. Why get all depressed and paint/write/compose/sculpt/etc when you can drink beer and play cricket or surf?

Australia is just too nice a place for good art to be created, unless if we're talking satire shows and paintings consisting mostly of dots. So there's no irony whatsoever in my claim that this album is the highpoint in Australian art thus far. Yes, move over Sydney Nolan, Tim Winton, Banjo Patterson, other horribly mediocre painters/writers/bush poets (Waltzing Matilda sucks balls, guys, stop singing it at sports games and let it die already), this is some amazing stuff that should replace our horrible national anthem and get a public holiday in it's honour.

"Transcendence into the Peripheral" is a strange and wonderful album, and you'll be perplexed and entranced by it long after the last song has stopped playing. Whereas most death/doom I'd heard (which isn't a lot) before this album made a point of using death metal riffs that were somewhat watered down and never all that fast paced - basically sounding like the doom section of the song sped up- diSEMBOWELMENT mix some furious blasty death/grind with some of the dreamiest, deepest (albeit still devastating) doom I've ever heard. It's a strange formula, and the excellent execution of this- the seamless transitions between the slow and the fast- make this whole thing even more confusing.

"The sound of the blue, an eternity of complete acquiescence,
I cannot move, nor do I need to, for it is enough to lie on the cliff
And become entrapped in a world of escapism and peace,
Cerulean transience of all my imagined shores, "

It's a shame you can't hang albums in art galleries; this album is one that's meant to be listened to and understood as much as possible . If this was purely death/grind then it's meaning might be obvious, same if this record consisted mostly of the dreamier bits. Ultimately though we see both heaven and hell; good and evil, life and death, everything mixed together and made one. The masterful juxtaposition of moods on display here suggest that Disembowelment didn't really have any theme, indeed, going for something that's quite the opposite; not just focusing on one subject matter but bringing us an unimaginably broad vista that just encompasses everything (albeit often more on the crushing, depressed side of things). Less of an imparting of meaning, and more just showing you, well, everything about everything. Perhaps the themes and meanings aren't meant to be as confusing and meta as I'm thinking; instead it's likely that these guys are all a bunch of ascended beings and I'm just not worthy to understand what they have deigned to pass down to me. Or, I'm just really dumb. Regardless, in my spare time I'm going to draw up a religion based on this.

My many drunk ramblings about the sheer depth and celestial meaning etc. of this may get you kind of worried; perhaps thoughts like "I imagine this is some gimmick 'deep and meaningful' band that's total rubbish" are entering your head. Not to worry, though, this doesn't rely on monk chant or orthodox Satanism or whatever to appear all mystical and transcendent. Nope, the music is as befuddling and wonderful as everything else. The whole thing is too dark and heavy to be called a "pleasurable" listen, but this album could be about teapots and it'd still be a classic death/doom album. The death/grind riffs are really ferocious; the opening riff to the album being a good statement that this is not
just another death/doom band. Full of blastbeats, fast and extremely heavy (Throne or Orhnan being another good example). Said heaviness is increased to singularity type densities when Disembowelment slow it all down, I've always thought that doom when done right is a good deal heavier then the blast-iest death metal, and the proof is in basically every song in this album (the epic "Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory" being a good example). Massive stuff that invites all sorts of "really big thing" type adjectives.

Continuing on the "strange but mind blowing" theme, the production. Cavernous but still as clear as it should be; drums are trigger heavy but the whole thing still has a warm, organic tone, guitars are strangely trebly and death metal sounding, but still sound monolithic during the doom parts. It's a great example of production that couldn't really be objectively called 'good' (in terms of frequency response and what not) but it works, and it works incredibly well. This album would be great whether it was recorded by Bob Rock or Paysage D'Hiver; the fact that the production is perfect makes this whole thing even better.

I kind of liken this band to Thergothon; like that band these guys seemed to stumble upon something truly otherworldly and powerful; so powerful that a second album was just not possible. Alternatively this may have been a bunch of hippies on a bad trip recording some soul crushing tunes. Still; whether this is just some stoned hippies or a deliberate, shattering look into the void this is some fine, fine work from these Melbournians; and it is a relief that us antipodeans aren't just tanned dudes that are good at surfing and cricket (I'll take that over nothing, mind). Many thanks to these guys for providing a crushing, deep and mind boggling death/doom masterpiece.


**I'm sure I've missed some great australian art that's well known. No, I don't care.

Oppressively heavy, at times hauntingly and majestically introspective, this album from extinct Melbourne beast Disembowelment is a diamond in the rough. Whereas a tendency might exist to classify this band along side those of the Doom Metal sub-genre, this release from the band transcends that genre qualitatively and idealistically. Indeed the music has more in common with grindcore and also ambient music than some overly sentimental and melancholic doom/heavy metal.

A high level of musical variation is displayed as furiously fast and liquid 'melodic' phrases flow and progress linearly, subsequently changing down to slow but vast and crushing passages of, yes, ambient riffing.

Tone is delivered through a huge and hideous method of production partly paralleled in much grindcore music but here given much more bass and also some reverb. This production technique allows such slow and weighty riff fragments to hang in an infinite space, vibrating with an intensity comparable only to the energy levels immediately furnished by an exothermic reaction in the sun.

Clean but deconstructed 'lead' guitar lines are used to stunning effect when placed over these fragmented and weighty undercurrents of thunder, as are occasional clean vocals, creating an ambient and 'doomy' variation of melodic grindcore. These aspects of the music are given boundaries by shifting percussion which sometimes hits repetitively, slow and hard, in rhythm with the laborious riffs and at other times changes to blast furiously around the riff pattern.

Progression in each composition is thus often slow, but it is by no means non-existent. Tacks do flow, often remarkably so, but... slowly - due to the ambient nature of much of the music which injects much more space into metal than is the norm, especially in grindcore-influenced metal. This is reflected in the long length of time expended by most of the tracks.

This is vast music and it dwarfs the listener, but in this way it is far from being self-obsessive. I imagine that, due to its impact, it is as much an exercise in ego death as can be achieved by music. However, one's time meditating with this monster will nevertheless furnish questions and highlight the ever groping nature of the human being.

From 'Corrupt Australia': http://australia.corrupt.org/category/Art

That's all there is to be found in this beautiful debut release from a band that split-up way too early. Only in some parallel universe where Disembowelment is still together can you experience whatever majesty would come following he release of Transcendence Into The Peripheral.

This album is, undoubtedly, a Doom Metal release, but upon hearing the Opening track, you'd probably mistake this band for a Death/Grind group (Excoriate is a perfect example of Grind representation). Indeed, there are various influences jumbled into one that create the sound heard while listening to these songs such as Death Metal, Grind, even some Black Metal elements are thrown into it (mainly certain vocal tacks).

The production on this album is.. Raw, by my standards, but it's not terribly raw (i.e. Static. Just like the Mayhem demo!). In fact, this album is a prime example of what raw production sounds like when done correctly. The drums come in perfectly clear. In fact, it's the drums that are the driving force of the music. Here's an interesting note, and little research for you to do. When listening to the songs, preferably the Blast Beats on the first two tracks, listen closely to the snare. It almost sounds like he has two completely different snare drums (which is very Goratory. Of course this was made in '93, so therefore, Disembowelment did it first, if he uses two snare drums, that is.). The guitar are low, down/drop tuned and slightly monotone, but they're perfect for this Doom Metal sound the band went for (Electric Funeral, anyone?). The Bass -- which IS audible -- is not distorted at all. I love this aspect. The bass is recorded on a completely clean channel, and matches with the guitar perfectly. The clean guitars come in neatly, and the tone that they're used on is absolutely beautiful. Cerulean Transience of All My Imagined Shores, Spirits Of The Tall Hills, and Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory are prime and absolutely perfect examples of how good this Tone is. The vocal are performed great, but I'm curious over whether or not there are effects added to them. Sometimes they seem to echo, so I question if there's a Reverb effect or if it's just that the microphone caught his voice bouncing off the walls in the studio. Either way, they are grand.

This album is a requiem and a message for the dead. It's dark, evil, gloomy, depressing, full of despair, and is all out Doom.

Outstanding Performances: All. They're all perfect.

DISEMBOWELMENT…………..a name that lives on in the history of metal as one of the most unique and powerful bands of its time. 1993 was the year that DISEMBOWELMENT dropped “Transcendence into the Peripheral” onto an unsuspecting metal crowd. The poetry and vocals of Renato Gallina, the mighty bass tone of Matt Skarajew, the riffs of Jason Kells and the controlled and heavy drumming of Paul Mazziotta combined to create something that “transcended” music genres as a whole, creating a sound that no one had ever dreamed of making before. “Transcendence into the Peripheral” creates an atmosphere like none other; a thick, heavy, dirty and organic sound, like a cave or cavern of some sort. The lyrics reaching to other worlds, distant mystic lands ranging from death ridden places to peaceful and tranquil landscapes. This is “Transcendence in the Peripheral” this is one of the greatest albums to ever be recorded.

Normally I hate track-by-track reviews but the sheer power of this album requires an explanation for every single point awarded.

”The Tree of Life and Death” starts off the album with a furious grinding guitar sound along with insane drumming and blast beat filled riffs then suddenly stopping and shifting to the genre of total and utter doom, the lyrics of a doomed town, whose peasants are dying and see death face to face; an incredible start to the journey into hell and back.

”Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory” is the first song that starts doom and stays doom for a long time. With a powerful beginning of chanting, waning guitars and low, deep drum beats. Perhaps one of the best songs on the album, the riff doesn’t change for minutes and the song does not build up until the end and then leaving the listener with a sudden stop and the beginning riff is played again….slowly….slower and then is covered by a low hum and a quiet stop.

”Excoriate” starts off really fast, picking up right away to catch a surprised and dulled listener from “Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory”. Blasting for minutes then like a wall the doom hits, with powerful double bass work, a droning riff and some reeeaaaaalllllyyy slow vocals the shear sinister nature of this song (hence the title) shows its ugly venomous head. Possibly the best example of DISEMBOWELMENT’s sound is this song.

”Nightside of Eden” a spoken word interlude with female vocals and slow and melodic chords and harps breaks up the ultra-heavy and creepy vibe and adds a layer of maturity and poetic touches. The somber and romantic lyrics really pull away from the negativity of the last track.

”A Burial at Ornans” words cannot describe this song. My God in Heaven, this song might be one of the greatest songs ever penned. I would really like to explain the music but it’s impossible.

”The Spirits of the Tall Hills” is another fantastic track, another insanely slow and mystic passage of funeral doom mixed with blasting. The lyrics in this song are some of the best ever written that these eyes have seen:
”………the Spirits embrace my soul, as I envision the neutral spectrum before me, the harp echoes and echoes and……..my wings take me to bewilderment”

A phenomenal ending coupled with these lyrics makes for one hell of a song.

”Cerulean Transience of all My Imagined Shores” is simply breathtaking. The whole album took us to hell and this song drags us up into the heavens as we all melt away into souls. The very last note fades away into nothingness and this song completes our journey to discover our own existence, one of the most powerful endings to an album that has ever been created.

The insert inside of the album said “Purveyors of Premium Grind” I wonder if DISEMBOWELMENT knew that they were going to create on of the most influential doom records of all time; creating a whole new sound and look to doom. This album is the definition of flawless and if you cannot enjoy it I weep for you, as a part of you must be missing. It was written in cosmic power that this band would disband after this album but we all give a mighty bow to the powerful, crushing and immense “d”. “Tread lightly……for we will not pass this way again”

I love this album. I loved this band's DUSK EP. I played this album every day for MONTHS. I was so enraptured by it that I played it for everyone I knew, even if I knew they hated metal. Many a fan of the COCTEAU TWINS or DEAD CAN DANCE came to be blown away by it. It is easily one of the most affecting, disturbing, ethereal and atmospheric albums I've ever heard. Sure it's doom, but it is so much more. The grind breaks that appear out of nowhere, the haunting melodies that sweep in unexpectedly, the dreary mellow passages, it all adds up to an amazing effort. To this day, outside of drone doom like SUNN, I don't know of a slower track than "A Burial At Ornas." I once figured out that it took the band something like a minute and twenty seconds to perform the entire central riff ONCE. That is amazing. Along with THERGOTHON, I thought I had died and gone to some weird zombie like bliss state upon hearing this amazing recording. Perhaps most alarmingly, apart from SKEPTICISM, I have heard no other band even begin to approach the bleak majesty of this music. If somebody has, PLEASE email me and tell me about 'em. I could write an entire book on the soundscapes of woe and desolation that I envisage upon hearing this masterpiece, and maybe someday I (or somebody else) will. And yes, I have heard the subsequent project TRIAL OF THE BOW, and I do enjoy their music quite a lot. But TRANSCENDENCE is once of those albums that is a law and a reality unto itself. Praises be that it is easily available in reissued form once again, as it seemed to slide under the radar in it's first life. If ou love doom, death, metal, or just mind and life expanding music, you must hear this. It is as close to a religious experience as most of us will ever hope to have.

Disembowelment, an Australasian quartet from Melbourne in Australian. Formed in 1989, Disembowelment are considered one of the most talented bands to ever record with the death/doom crossover genre. By many, this Australian act are consider pioneers in the death/doom sound and to this day, one of the most influential bands to reign. Considering the fact that Disembowelment only issued one full-length, albeit a stunning one, to the public, this is quite some feat. It took four years for the band to come out with ‘Transcendence Into The Peripheral’, but it was worth the wait. Given the complaints of many fans in recent years, Disembowelment break the mould given the fact that they have a very distinctive sound and the unusual, for the time anyway, imprinting of grind on their music wasn’t the norm for bands of this nature. Grind was seemingly never incorporated into the death/doom sound, but Disembowelment turned things on their head when they decided it was time to unleash something slightly different to the world in 1993. This isn’t your typical death/doom metal record. Although it does contain features of both genres, as I said, there is an overwhelming grind influence, especially in terms of the percussion on the record. ‘Transcendence Into The Peripheral’ is one of the pinnacle moments in death/doom history and will forever be seen as a noted highlight in many fans collections. Although it may be over a decade old, time has not had it’s way with this strong debut. The gruelling nature of this record will not allow itself to be beaten by the burden that time has on the shoulders of many an album. Standing the test of time is important when considering the affective attributes of this record. The most important elements still sound good, even to this day.

With just under an hour of material present on ‘Transcendence Into The Peripheral’, Disembowelment have a tough job on their hands in making this an interesting listen. All too often doom metal can bore the audience to tears with it’s slow progressions and awkward song structures which don’t allow for much variation. Disembowelment do not come into this equation. They are not one of the many bands who suffer from a lack of creativity, that is for sure. This record is creative in it’s own right and innovative for both the era it came out in and the modern scene. It’s eclectic range of influences is probably the most important factor in this remaining an interesting listen for an hour. It isn’t highly sought after for no reason. The purpose of the music seems to be to lead the listener into a false sense of security and make them believe they are in control over what is going to happen. Take ‘A Burial At Ornans’, one of the best tracks on the record, this song starts almost typically of doom metal songs. Slow, but gradual progression on the guitars with a persistent percussion section pounding away in the distance. At first, the audience will believe they’re in for a fairly standard doom metal ride, but the influence of both the death and grind genres do not allow the audience to dictate the direction of the record and it’s the strong direction that Disembowelment take us in that makes this almost a perfect rollercoaster ride of emotions. For many, this was probably the first time one questioned oneself over their knowledge of the crossover genre. It was a fairly predictable ride in the past, but Disembowelment have torn up the road and layered it with numerous death traps in which each and every one of us can unwittingly fall in to. After a fairly standard opening to this track, ‘A Burial At Ornans’, that is when things begin to show a different side. The track speeds up and signifies the Australian’s mesmerising use of varied tempos, which later becomes important not only to the song, but the entire record. Whilst the bellows of the vocalist continue to show us that the soundscapes are consistently slow and sparse of anything but negative emotion, the percussion becomes all important. This epic assault of almost 15 minutes really takes off and the death/grind influences grip the song by the throat and torture it into submission. The furious guitars, with the subtle bass work tirelessly in creating a sense of beauty in the overwhelmingly bleak atmospheres. The percussion has never been so important to a band as it is to Disembowelment. In many ways, it dictates play. Slow, but pressing beats slowly evolve, like the other elements of the songs, into aggressive, fast and furious break downs.

The crunching distortion of the guitars is perfect for the doom basis of the material, the percussion really brings that death/grind feeling to the foreground with oppressive double bass work and snapping snares which aim to stab the audience with punishing sounds. The contrast of fast and slow music is portrayed immensely by the Melbourne based band. The only minor concern is with the vocals. Although they stand the test of time, they don’t press the audience with as high intensity that the drums do, for example. Whilst, musically, the atmospheric styling of Disembowelment is nigh on perfect, the vocals aren’t the best they could do. However, tracks like ‘Your Prophetic Throne Of Ivory’ do show that they could have been a lot better. Personally, I think the band should have varied the vocals. Clean, almost operatic like vocals during the cleaner sections, whilst the harsh vocals should come in when the tempos deviated from the norm. The production is a bit of a worry too. The bass is fairly anonymous, which is disappointing. It’s influence is very subtle and of course, it does do the ground level work on the soundscapes, but with more influence then the bass could have upped it’s performance.

Doom metal can be an awfully confusing genre... on one hand, there's your classic "rocking" doom metal, the funeral-dirge insomnia-curing drone nonsense, and the death/doom camp. Disembowelment's sole full-length does a damn good job of combining the latter two, while increasing the death metal quota. In other words, you get the crushing, oppressive feel of drone-doom coupled with the crunch and power of old-school slow death maestro's like Asphyx and Obituary. That's not to say this is particularly headbangable. No, it's the sort of thing you throw on when you wish to be absorbed in a sickening atmosphere of pure melancholic hate.

"The Tree Of Life And Death" opens things up with a deceptively fast section, with slashing death metal riffs and a cleaner guitar passage weaving in and out of drumming which alternates between midpaced blasting and slower pounding. It gets a bit weird when the blasts cross over into the clean parts, where it just sounds like the drummer forgot to slow down, but that only happens once. The first minute or so continues like this, before the pace drops down to a sludgy crawl. This approach continues for the remainder of the song, changing enough to keep one's mind occupied, but not so much as to become disjointed. Then "Your Prophetic Throne Of Ivory" kicks off with an atmosphere so morbidly depressing, weaker souls will be reaching for the razors within the first 30 seconds. Of course, it speeds up too, switching things around as much as the first song. But that first section returns later on, and it's just as amazing the second time round.

"Excoriate", on the other hand, is mostly a fast, brutal death metal song, which is then followed by the mellow interlude "Nightside of Eden", which leads into the second half. Here, the music keeps to a more streamlined approach, mostly slower paced and less fractured, with longer songs which allow the listener to sink into the droning depression of it all. "A Burial At Ornans" is easily the most impressive song here. Words are really insufficient to describe this thing, it's just too good to dance about architure, so I won't even bother.

After nearly an hour, you'll feel physically drained if you pay full attention this album. It's either an emotionally scouring experience, or a chore to endure, depending on your personal preferences and mood at the time. The production, too, is much rougher than most similar releases at the time - very resonant and murky, as if the drums and vocals (which consist entirely of a moaning, inhuman bellow) were recorded in an enormous, echoing cavern while the guitars were tracked underwater and filtered through granite. This is especially prominent during the fast section, where the reverb becomes almost overpowering to the music itself. This leads to an album that has rightly become a forgotten gem - couple that with the understated cover and a band photo that looks like an emo band, and it's obvious Disembowelment were going out of their way to remain unnoticed by those who fail to look past the gore-laden artwork and "tough guy" image utilized so much in the early 90's. Methinks this is long overdue for a reissue, but I guess Relapse would rather keep churning out a shitload crappy grindcore, ambient noise and stoner rock like they've been doing for the last 8 years or so. Ah well... if you can find this anywhere, and are prepared for an exceptionally challenging listen, then don't hestitate to pick it.