Extinction – Smoldering Enfoulment (DIY, 21 July 2020)

 

Happy Earth Day!

Seems like a rather opportune time to take a look back at an album we missed out on sharing with you when it was released last summer: the debut of Swedish self-proclaimed “Eco-Slam” band Extinction, Smoldering Enfoulment. Eight tracks, nearly twenty minutes, of raw brutality — symbolic of the way humans have treated our planet and everything living on it.

 

Filled with the hard-hitting guitar chugs that give the “slam” sub-sub-genre of death metal its name, as well as the obligatory cookie monster vocals and punctuated with a delightfully ringing snare tone, these songs nevertheless aren’t characteristic of a one-trick pony by any means. Many of the riffs in here share more in common with a traditional death metal or death-thrash style, occasionally even slipping into something of a blackened-death motif. In any case, though, it’s all very well executed — and the engineering/mixing/mastering deserves a nod as well, as the separate guitar, bass, drum, and vocal tracks are all clearly audibly distinguished in a way not always found at this most brutal end of the musical spectrum.

The most important part here, though, is the message. Of course as is the case with most death metal, the words aren’t always completely discernible. But the lyrics (chiefly concerned with a variety of extinct, suspected extinct, or soon-to-be extinct species) can all be found listed on Bandcamp. And the recorded tracks are all threaded together by various samples of dire narration courtesy of Sir David Attenborough, taken from one of his numerous programs which espouse both the wonders of nature and the apocalyptic consequences inevitably to result from people’s mishandling and mistreating of it.

The goal of such documentaries is clearly to be both entertaining and educational: to attract the viewer’s attention but also to inform and forewarn. And that appears to also be the aim of Extinction: to draw the listener in with the riffs and slams, to get your head banging, but then to also get your brain thinking.

 

Visit the Extinction Bandcamp page to download Smoldering Enfoulment, OR to purchase a physical copy — taped over a recycled cassette tape, stamped with the band’s logo (see a few examples in the image above).
 
While you’re there you can also choose the option of apparel with the band’s logo — also custom-created and unique, since each order will be made from a recycled thrift shop garment.
 

 

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http://extinctionevent.bandcamp.com
http://twitter.com/capt_grapefruit