(TOFU CARNAGE; 2011) A REVIEW FROM THE VAULT (UPDATE BELOW)
Oh, these crazy kids today with their harbinger of doom and such. This atmospheric album totally transcends everything you thought you knew about the doom metal genre. It is at once suffocatingly harsh and hauntingly beautiful. This record gets me a little teary-eyed because if I had a son, I know that he would look just like Dead To a Dying World. The self-titled slab features two longish tunes with one short little ditty sandwiched between (14:30, 7:00 and 22:20, respectively). Most such epic productions of this ilk would get very boring, very quickly. Not so with DEAD TO A DYING WORLD. The music is nuanced and full of little moments that set it apart; it never lags or drags. I was engaged from the very first droning wails of that cello. Yep… you heard right… cello.
I’m not exactly sure how a song (especially one that’s over fourteen-and-a-half-minutes long) can be so breathlessly atmospheric and relentlessly claustrophobic at the same time, but “Concrete and Steel” is those things and more. This band’s technical acumen is akin to the precision cuts of a surgeon; the guitars and drums are crisp and progressive, subversively drawing you into the maelstrom. The lyrics offer nothing but doom and abject misery, as mankind’s seeming need to self-destruct and take everything else along for the ride is the focal point: “Searing effigies of our hope/Stand mocking our pain/And I see you screaming/I see you, but I can’t hear a thing.” Those lyrics are even more evocative and – dare I say – creepy as offered up by Mike Yeager and cellist Sam Pruitt. “Stagnation” is more oppressive and ominous than the first number, and in less then half the time. The unrelentingly dismal strains of the cello bores into your soul as the lyrics rip away at the edges of the hole it opens. Some may hope for redemption with the final offering; there is none. “We Enter the Circle At Night… and Are Consumed By Fire” is, indeed, about the after effects of countless millennia of selfish waste and man’s inhumanity to man, but there is only retribution. The ebb and surge of acoustic instrumentation counterbalanced by progressive, doom-laden metal rushing to an apocalyptic end sees hope lifted up in one instance, only to be crushed on the twisted and broken remnants of a world destroyed. DEAD TO A DYING WORLD is one of those records that gets into your brain, threatening the cerebral cortex with a sensory overload that will leave you drooling and babbling like a lunatic. And, yet… you must listen; you can’t turn away or turn it down or tune it out. Such a production, my friends, is all anyone can ask from a group of musicians like Dead To a Dying World.
A download of the album is available here: tofucarnagerecords.bandcamp.com; the two record vinyl version is available here: tofucarnage.com.
UPDATE: The band recently completed work on their second album. The vinyl release of LITANY is imminent.