siLLy puPPy
DAMNATORY was a Swiss death metal band from Naters that formed in 1989 and existed up until the early 2000s but never released an actual album. What the band did put out was a three demos and two EPs and were fairly well regarded with their style of old school death metal that featured some doom elements.
HYBRIDIZED DEFORMITY was the band’s first EP emerging in the year of its formation and consisted of a mere three tracks that just misses the 14 minute mark. While only released in the 7” vinyl format once, the band released all of its recordings which were included on the compilation “The Complete Disgoregraphy 1991-2003.”
This lineup includes Patrick (guitars), Marco (bass), Sascha (drums), Patrick (another one on guitars) and another Marco on vocals. OK, no extra points for making that easy to figure out. Although this band never really went anywhere the potential was clearly there and despite the demo grade quality of this recording, DAMNATORY clearly had a keen sense of bands like Incantation, Immolation and other old school death metal bands that dwelled in the underworld.
The musical style is not the fast paced Morbid Angel style of death metal but rather resides somewhere between old school death metal and traditional doom metal with chugging riffs at mid-tempo with heavier guitar riffing and faster outbursts for contrast. The vocals are the typical guttural growls and the band did pretty good to change up the guitar riffs, bass lines and drumming patterns to keep it interesting.
There were literally thousands of these old school extreme metal bands that existed and only left their fossil remains deep in the metal underground with many deserving to go the way of the dodo and others like DAMNATORY clearly eligible for primetime slots in your listening experience. Perhaps not the most original band at this point but this was only the beginning and HYBRIDIZED DEFORMITY was a great start to the more polished and accomplished “Docta Ignorantia EP.”