Dusted Down: Dying Fetus – Purification Through Violence

Zach Buggy takes us on a trip back to the birth of death metal

Dying Fetus – Purification Through Violence (Relapse)

While the 80s begat the inception of the death metal genre, thanks in no small part to Venom; their highly influential album, Black Metal serving as titular cornerstone to yet another offshoot of extreme music, it was arguably the nineties that would see the scene mutate and gestate into its most notable forms.

Acts like Death, Obituary, Possessed and Morbid Angel, took cues from the bleaker, more intense, and sonically violent approach to thrash metal first introduced by Slayer. This proto-death style would lay the groundwork for pioneers like Cannibal Corpse to subvert their position upon the cusp of transition from traditional “80’s death metal” to the brutal and technical categorizations of the modern age.

In Michigan and Birmingham, acts like Repulsion and Napalm Death were already beginning to fuse elements of death metal and hardcore punk, joining the collective dots to foster the grindcore genre.

It was in the midst of this fluidity that Dying Fetus – from Maryland, near Washington DC – crawled out of the woodwork, offensive band-name, edginess and brutality all in check. Before the plethora of line-up changes that would ultimately render primary songwriter, guitarist and vocalist John Gallagher as the sole original member, the group crafted a visceral debut, an unpleasant and seemingly timeless exercise in brutalised, technical death metal.

Following their ‘Infatuation With Malevolence’ collection of early demos, 1996 saw the release of Purification Through Violence, which after twenty-five years remains a defining chapter in the decrepit progression of extreme music. Taking the slamming brutality and shock-value gore of Cannibal Corpse, the technical wizardry of Decapitated (another pioneering tech-death act making similar strides in tandem across Europe) and the abrasive attitude of grindcore, Dying Fetus crafted less an album, and more a time-capsule of the scene in the mid-nineties.

With titles like ‘Blunt Force Trauma’ and ‘Beaten Into Submission’, it’s evident that the more political and nuanced critical subject matter of their later material was still some ways away. Beneath the somewhat juvenile lyrical content of former bassist/vocalist Jason Netherton, however, was an unmatched virtuosity in terms of composition, thanks in no small sort to Gallagher’s ludicrous ability.

When the malevolent chaos of ‘Skull Fucked’ drops out for a moment for an avant-garde Arabian motif, it signalled a willingness to expand and toy with the confines of what was starting to be perceived as a rigid scene with little to no room for dynamism. These micro-moments of non-sequiturs appear in fragments like the Eastern acoustic plucking segment in ‘Raped On The Altar’, offering a blink and you’ll miss it moment of respite from the assault.

The raw, lo-fi production values fall far more in line with grindcore, straying away from the more polished edges the majority of death metal releases sported at the time. The fact that closing track, ‘Scum (Fuck The Weak)’, is a Napalm Death cover, serves as an even less subtle nod to the genre forebears, as well as a testament to Dying Fetus’ desire to break down, breed and mutate the confines of these extreme sub-categories of aggression into one festering melting pot of horror.

Where the band would go on to play an active role in the production of all subsequent releases, there’s no ignoring the grotesque audible aesthetic that permeates throughout their debut. From the non-EQ pot-pan snares rattles, to the over loaded vocals that whip from guttural sludge to shrieking banshee, all the way to the head-melting solos with too many notes for the mixer to pick up and pass through any self-respecting monitor, ‘Purification Through Torment’ still stands as a defining work within the realms of death metal, grindcore, the subsequent hybridization of the two (deathgrind) and extreme music as its own seething entity.

The album is a particular point of reference when examining the advent of tech-death, death-grind and even deathcore that would amass throughout the latter part of the nineties and into the new millennium. Future peers spread across North America and Europe alike, such as Gorguts, Necrophagist and Cryptopsy would continue pushing the technical parameters of the genre, while grindcore and hardcore leaning acts e.g. Cattle Decapitation, Pig Destroyer would be spurred on to add more shifting layers of aggression to their approach.

While Purification Through Violence might not be the first technical death metal album recorded in our known universe, it’s surely one of the most integral.

Zach Buggy