Album Review: Sanguisugabogg – Homicidal Ecstasy (Century Media)

Gore-encrusted brutal death metal band, Sanguisugabogg are back! Delivering the follow-up to the filth of 2021’s Tortured Whole with ‘Homicidal Ecstasy’. It is out on February 3rd, 2023, via Century Media Records.

With the blood-gushing and flesh-rendering start of Black Market Vasectomy, Sanguisugabogg make two things perfectly clear. The first is that this is a much more refined band. The second is that is they are still unashamedly nasty.

Sanguisugabogg skills may have developed significantly, and they have a much clearer understanding of what they are. However, they continue to deliver gory, violent, and horrifying levels of brutal death metal. A sound that slices through skin, flesh, and muscle to reach the teeth-grinding bone underneath. Just listen to the down-tuned heaviness of Face Ripped Off to understand that.

The guttural garishness continues with the pungency of Pissed, before the vomit-inducing Testicular Rot sees Sanguisugabogg alternate between gurgling growls and frenzied maiming. Followed then by the murderous mayhem of Hungry For Your Insides, and Skin Cushion’s vile intensity takes the viciousness to an even darker level. The halfway point of the album coming in a shower of blood and guts.

It’s no less sickening with the second half though, even if the monster in all of us is thoroughly onboard with Sanguisugabogg’s detestable battering. There’s something just so appealing about this level of extreme and that it’s coming from a band who are so well-versed at delivering discernible sonic horror, is all the more enjoyable.

It’s a crunching experience next with A Lesson in Savagery, even though the whole album can be called that. Before the brutal death metallers really expose the nerve-endings with Narcissistic Incisions and beat the mind into submission with Mortal Admonishment. Both tracks are great examples of how developed Sanguisugabogg is now as the group take their torturous time, switching tempos and rhythms to keep things on edge. All while sounding undeniably and consistently savage.

Now, there is an argument that this level of ruthlessness, spread across twelve tracks and coming at around forty-five minutes will make the mind numb after a while. An argument that does ring true as Homicidal Ecstasy starts to reach its gory end.

That being said, Sanguisugabogg almost always manage to snap the mind out of it. Doing so with the crunching of broken bones, the squelch of rendered flesh, and the screams of tortured souls. Proclamation of the Frail is nauseating, but seems tame in comparison to the stomach-churning and muscle-destroying sound of Necrosexual Deviant. Before the heinous sound of Sanguisugabogg’s horror show is encapsulated by Feening for Bloodshed. A finale as viciously violent as anything elsewhere on the album.

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