Register Forgot login?

© 2002-2024
Encyclopaedia Metallum

Privacy Policy

Disgorge > Cognitive Lust of Mutilation > Reviews
Disgorge - Cognitive Lust of Mutilation

11 minutes of abhorrent mutilation - 85%

Traumawillalwayslinger, March 19th, 2024
Written based on this version: 1992, Cassette, Independent

If you’re into slam and brutal death metal, then I don’t need to explain who Disgroge (California, not Mexico) is. These guys paved the way for many bands to follow in their footsteps. This band is quite iconic for their style of ultra-groovy brutal death metal. They were one of the earliest bands to integrate very frantic and heavy pinch harmonics into brutal death metal. This band also paved the way for extensive technical play to be used in slam and brutal death metal. Overall, they’re awesome and extremely influential in the brutal death metal scene. And it all starts here with their 1992 demo “Cognitive Lust of Mutilation”

This demo has four songs with a runtime of over just 11 minutes. And goddamn this is like Suffocation on crack. For over 11 minutes it’s a nonstop beatdown of crushing grooves and brutal death metal mayhem. It’s raw and dirty especially when you look at how crushing and rhythmic the guitars are. I’ve always been a fan of the extreme groove-oriented style of death metal. And with a raw demo-like production like this demo, it makes it even better.

Let’s go into detail about the guitars. Over these four songs, you’re greeted with insanely fast and tremolo-dominant riffs. Where groove and palm-muted chugs dominate a lot of the composition, it’s a relentless attack that manages to switch things up now and then. It’s not just a mindless assault of slams and gurgles, there’s actually a sense of groove and flow here. You’ve got a good balance of slower/ more mid-paced sections, and then you have the more blasting-oriented sections.

Each song is a brutal neck snap of just pure heaviness, with some crisp chord progressions as well. There is a lot of Suffocation and early Cannibal Corpse influences to be found here. But mainly Suffocation rings a bell as a big influence. These three gentlemen are great death metal musicians and made four very groovy and memorable songs. My favorite song is easily the classic “Womb Full of Scabs”.

The drums are just as intense as the guitars. While Ricky Myers is now known for being the lead vocalist of the mighty Suffocation. He began out as a very talented drummer who played extremely unapologetic blast-beat-soaked death metal. When Ricky pulls out a blast beat or a turnover it’s fucking loud and in your face. His way of flowing with his drums is insane, especially when he goes into a blast beat part. Which essentially sounds like someone getting mauled to death by machine gun fire.

The production for this demo is pretty fucking killer. Everything is raw and barebone, with the guitars having a chunky ass tone to it that’ll break you down limb from limb. The drums sound crisp as well and don’t get drowned in the loud thick guitar tone. And the vocals sound great on here as well. In the grand scheme of things, this demo is produced really well. Nothing is drowned out and everything sounds powerful.

Vocally this is great as well. It’s not delving into the pure gurgling territory that later Disgorge albums would go down. In this demo bassist and vocalist Bryan Ugartechea has a more early Chris Barnes style of vocals. He also sounds a bit like Frank Mullen as well at times. He’s got a great vocal flow, and while the vocals can be called one-dimensional without much variation. To me, the vocals sound great and gut-punching.

This demo is a very unique and great start for this band. It has the building blocks of what Disgorge would do later down the line on classic records like “She Lay Gutted” or “Consume the Forsaken”. And set the stage for just how impactful Disgorge would be. If you’re an extreme metal fanatic who loves demos. Listen to this demo.

Spewing forth since '92 - 80%

Pathological_Frolic, July 11th, 2008

Disgorge, as they appear on this demo, are a pretty good example of the emerging sound of what would become modern brutal death metal. Brutal for its time, but not quite early enough to predate its most obvious influences, those being Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation, Immolation and others of a similar ilk. Perhaps I'm simply too familiarized with the hazy production and freewheeling nature of the band's later compositions, but I can't help but sit in awe at how this demo recorded in 1992 by some largely unknown death metal band possesses such clarity. Every instrument is more or less audible; the guitars, the bass, every little subtlety of the drums...Everything, really.

The guitar playing on this album is the standard of the early NYDM scene; demented tremolo lines, crushing percussive chordal progressions both fast and slow, with the occasional doom-influenced parts sounding well fit for an Autopsy album. It's not nearly as chaotic as things would be on later records, though the songs still are essentially a collection of riffs expounding upon a single musical theme that mostly abandon the verse/chorus/verse methodology of the typical death metal bands at the time. The vocalist has some natural reverberation on his voice, though it's far from the gurgle of Matti Way, being more akin to a deeper-toned Frank Mullen.

I recommend this not only to Disgorge fans, but fans of Suffocation and other such early brutal death metal acts that might otherwise be turned off to Disgorge's studio releases.