Phonebook Eater
6/10
“Towards The Megalith” has an amazing, angry sound, without there being songs.
Disma are an American Death Metal band that have been recognized for this debut album “Towards the Megalith”, mostly because of the distinct growl of the singer, who gave Death Metal fans many chills. Despite liking his voice a lot, I’m not that into the music in this album, even though I do recognize the immense talent this band has as far as the single musicians are concerned.
The reason why this band’s singer has been praised is because his growl is, in one word, scary. It is extremely guttural, deep, and it truly sounds like a enormous, fierce monster from a remote dungeon that has just been awakened. It’s basically like it was constantly growling “who dares wake me up from my sleep?”. The music is extremely dirty, no melodies whatsoever, just pure rage and evil. There are also several time changes during a song, which is very impressive to hear for such a band. The length of these tracks are as a consequence longer than an average metal song. Not only the vocals but also the music has a slow, dark, and sludgy tone, as if they were the score of the monster getting out of his cave. This album in particular has been labeled also Death Doom Metal because of the slowness of the music.
My problem with this album is not at all about the music, but it’s more about the songs themselves: none of them have moments that I care for, none that stand out. All of them, honestly, sound pretty much the same; some people like that, because it gives more consistency to the album, but it’s more of a negative type of consistency, as instead of being a lot of great tracks it’s a lot of non-memorable tracks all squished in forty five minutes.
A decent Death Metal album, but with a great sound. I’m sure this band will come back with a better album than this, with a more mature sound. However, I’m also sure enthusiasts of the Death Metal genre would love this, just because of the sound this band delivers.