For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to find a dead body. A human corpse left out to the elements—taut, tanned and broken over the jagged caliche. A half buried human face with the dirt compacted in the nostrils, mouth agape and pouring with stinking earth, limbs floating around in a conspicuous shallow grave. The classic alabaster heap of the impossibly surreal mannequin lying in direct contrast to everything you could ever comprehend. The skeletal remains of an obscured burnt offering in decaying ill-fitting blue jeans, frozen in repose, screaming and decimated. The scattered scraps of the less fortunate left behind by predation: gnawed, splayed and bleached in the sun. An inevitable end fashioned in the worst culmination of violence and dehumanization. Something about the bright white matter-of-fact grounding nature of the experience has always piqued my interest. That morbid childhood curiosity and those vivid daydream visuals are immediately brought to mind by Extreme Decay's latest album, Downfall Of A God Complex. Maybe it's the band's blatant name or maybe it's their corpse ladened cover art, but there is something about their new full-length that gives me breaths of that hot brown, wafting stench of mass decomp.
Extreme Decay formed in the beginning of 1998 in Malang City in the the East Java province of Indonesia and released a small slew of demos, splits, and compilation contributions. The band's earlier sound combined elements of crust punk and grindcore, much akin to Japan's noise-punk band, Confuse. The band released their full-length album, Progressive Destruction, in 1999 and followed it up with the 2002 album, Sampah Dunia Ketiga. Since then the band has set a tradition of maintaining a decade's gap between albums. After Sampah Dunia Ketiga, Holocaust Resistance was released in 2010. Now in 2022, Extreme Decay has returned with Downfall Of A God Complex. A visceral and accomplished release that has positioned the band on the top of Asia's grindcore elite.
Downfall Of A God Complex continues with the intensity of modern sounding grindcore that Extreme Decay established with Holocaust Resistance and 2021's ANTIVIRAL EP. Honestly, Downfall Of A God Complex pairs easily with Return to the House of Grindcore's entire roaster. From Fading Trail to SlothPhantomMoth, even the nidorous musical stylings of Blasting Gore Necropsy. Extreme Decay's newest album is a volley of grindcore variegation with shades of black metal, death metal, hardcore, crustcore, crust punk, sludge, goregrind, grind 'n' roll and not to mention that Scandinavian grindcore we've come to appreciate so much here. Extreme Decay has honed a sound that bridges the rawness of the band's roots with the speed and sharpness of their current grindcore peers. A lot of that is in the mix and production as it marries the two perfectly, but most of it is in the evolved song writing and skilled musicianship. The coupling of grave dirt and voracity is the key to Extreme Decay's brand of blackened-Scandi-sandstorm-metal. Dust-core-earthen-grind. The same ambiance that the shambling putrescence of a clay-cracked-face Fulci zombie armed with a machine gun might bring to the party.
Straight from the start Extreme Decay open with a digitally moldered, seething hellscape of noise entitled, "Hellcome." A properly done noise-intro that lets out into dark, metal flecked grindcore fury. Fury is where Extreme Decay works best. Songs like "Bastardized Future," "UxDxHxG," "Burn The Bridges, Pull No Punches" and "Installing The Apocalypse, 99% Complete" are quick ragers that throw up big Nasum vibes. Not surprising considering the band covered "Inhale/Exhale" on Holocaust Resistance. In contrast the band slows things down from time to time in a way that still entertains and doesn't bog down the tracks in boredom. The chugging death metal trot, "Primal" is a headbanging offer to the old gods, complete with solos and all. Album closer, "Dekomposer" leaves us as we started with a pummeling crust-grilled blaster before ending in a sirening wane of doom infused samples and noise.
The musicianship rifled out on Downfall Of A God Complex is top-tier compared to anything else the band has put out some twenty years ago and is another aspect that is heightened by the studio production. The thrash guitar riffing is sharp, fast and swings between catchy punk choruses and rapid fire deathgrind speedballs. You can hear the UK '82 guitar tone mud caked and distorted, buried underneath the heavy and crushing metal tone. We're talking devastating palm mutes here, people. The bass guitar is high in the mix and well utilized. Many songs, like "Demensia Kompleks," showcase the bass's blown out, subwoofer quaking distortion. It's gnarly, heavy and astonishingly audible. It is the exact bass tone that you would want on an album like this. The drum work is a tumbling rock of lightening quick persistent pace that might not be flashy, but in its understated tenacity controls the trajectory of the entire album. Whether its angling from D-beat tears to sludgey stomps or from blast beats to cymbal emphasized punk kicks, the drums boil the songs into bubbling black gold.
By far, the most diverse and engaging element of Downfall Of A God Complex is the vocals. I'm unsure of which members contribute to the album specifically, but I'm willing to bet it was probably most everyone in some aspect. The two main species of vocals are the usual duo of high shrieks and low gutturals. Both of which vary unceasingly in pitch and tone. On any given track they can be mixed with either more panther or more gurgle. The deeper of the vocals often tend to side more on the goregrind side of things—throat croaking, gravel choking, soil teethed, cud chewing moans that regurgitate malice and contempt. Other vocals that show up run the gamut from power violence caveman yells to voice cracking youth crew yelps to hardcore barks and back.
Extreme Decay 's Downfall Of A God Complex is a great sounding album that finds the band appearing more lean and mean. I'm very reminded of another band that came back with a bite after a long hiatus between releases—Blockheads' Trip to the Void LP from last year. The ochre yellow reek of the extreme decay that consumed my childhood morbidity and still remains unchecked on my bucket list is just as brutal and raw as this grinding Extreme Decay from Indonesia. Yet unlike a stale wasted carcass forced into a premature sky burial, Extreme Decay managed to release an invigorating and fresh sounding album that details a veteran grind band that can still keep up with their modern grindcore contemporaries while still holding onto their roots of eclectic punk and metal influences. The Downfall Of A God Complex is not muddy, but it's definitely not clean. A little dirt never hurt. The Downfall Of A God Complex CD is currently available through Selfmadegod Records and through the band themselves.
FFO: Nasum, Death Toll 80K, Proletar, Catheter
Listen to the album: https://selfmadegod.bandcamp.com/album/downfall-of-a-god-complex
