After about 10 years lying in wait – or just dormant – Bengaluru’s Vikram Bhat and guitarist Jimmy Palkhivala have unleashed a new old beast back into the underground metal scene. And as you can see from the artwork of their project Gruesome Malady’s latest album Scumbustion, this monster is ready to be as savage and brutal as possible.First things first of course – if you thought metal was not for everyone, think about grind – that’s for even fewer. And then there’s Gruesome Malady’s “gurglegoregrind” – which is exactly what it sounds like. After reuniting, the members of doom/death metal band Dying Embrace (who maintain that Gruesome Malady is a studio-only project) have teamed up with one of Czech Republic’s leading underground metal labels – Bizarre Leprous – to release the 10-track Scumbustion.
It’s safe to say that if you’re not into grind, this is not going to be an easy listen. There’s plenty of shock value in the storytelling itself, from the movie dialogues sampled, ghoulish effects and of course, the inhuman growls and gurgles that punctuate rather lo-fi guitar skirmishes and drumrolls. The tempo changes often, breaking songs into different movements.
Palkhivala gets into his most melodic with punishing layered harmonies on the third track ‘Fondling the Bereaved’. There’s more of those lunatic harmonies on ‘Caressed with a Cleaver’, but it feels like Gruesome Malady are more interested in creating an atmosphere of vile, uncomfortableness more than have any concentrate on the music as such. While ‘Loathesome Longings’ is smooth, there are a lot of chopped up beats and vocal parts on ‘Mortuary of Debauchery’. There seem to be words and lyrics, but good luck deciphering them.
By now, there’s probably a churning feeling in your stomach (unless goregrind is part of your regular listening habits), which means mission accomplished for Gruesome Malady. They carry a groove and screeching guitars on ‘Reanimation Through the Retronomicon’, though the gurgled growls remain.