Band:	Pseudogod
Album:	Deathwomb Catechesis
Style:	Blackened death metal
Release date:	April 24, 2012
A review by:	wormdrink414

01. Vehement Decimation
02. Malignant Spears
03. Saturnalia (The Night Of The Return...)
04. Azazel
05. The Antichrist Victory
06. Necromancy Of The Iron Darkness
07. Encarnación Del Mal
08. The Triangular Phosphorescence

Seeing as how I'm part of the generation of endless trophy awarding, it'd only be fair for me to spread the joy of getting a pointless plastic thing to Russia and give Pseudogod 2012's "inexplicably unique death disc" trophy for this album. Yeah, might be premature, and I'm not going to actually send them one?can't imagine the shipping costs for a package to be sent that far?but it's the thought that counts. My second-grade teacher taught me that.

It's the fact that these guys don't offer anything that's really novel or "original" with their sound that gives Deathwomb its "inexplicably". They play brass-tacks, old school-inspired death with touches of black. That's about it. Add that to the fact that nothing at all about the overall image and song-titles and lyrical content here is unique for death or black metal in the slightest and, on paper, you've got an end product that simply shouldn't, by the laws of nature, be unique.

But it is, and in an entirely unique kind of way. Nothing gimmicky or trendy here. Its uniqueness is unique. We've got x-factors and atmospherics and whatnot to handle on this.

But they're accessible x-factors, its atmosphere wasn't overcooked, and the whatnot is vastly more more visceral than intellectual. You won't need to massage the pause and rewind buttons to "get" any of it. There's just something Pseudogod did to make Deathwomb exponentially more interesting than the sum of its hacked parts.

That said, even if it were merely dealing with parts-sums, it'd still ultimately be fairly impressive. The vocalist, in particular, brings the kind of power only a guy who feels he hasn't got anything to prove can muster. His performance is forceful and malicious-sounding, but it's entirely composed too. He sounds like a madman, no doubt about that, but like a madman who's in complete control of his madness. It's not the kind of in-your-face, rabid performance one expects from the likes of Nergal, for a pretty bad, pretty unrelated example, who seems to always set out to say, "yeah I am, clinically speaking, a dwarf, but I'll still bite your eyes out if you make me mad." This guy sounds like he's the battle-worn type one just doesn't need to be warned not to fuck with. You can just tell.

And everything else about this has a similar quality. The riffing, the kit-pounding, and the songwriting in general--it always sounds about to come unhinged, but it maintains a kind of fucked up cool throughout.

And it's all implausibly evil sounding in the end. Implausibly evil.

We've got what we in the reviews business call "nuanced things" on this. And it comes with a production job that brought all of its subtlety out expertly--it's not caked in grime and scuzz, but it's not even close to being bleachy either. As a whole, Deathwomb came out neither fully of the old school style, nor fully modern-sounding. It just sounds good. Plain and simple.