One can't help but wonder what the hell of a direction death metal could possibly take in 2025 to not sound regurgitated, yet the strikes of brilliance seem to land on spot way too frequently to ignore lately. Artists with some of the most anamorphic takes on the genre have taken a toll on our attention and stamina the last few years, one of them being (glory to Cryptopsy's legendary track with the same name) Dead and Dripping from New Jersey - a project fixated on songwriting debauchery, yet with blistering inspiration and unquestionable skill in chopping up whatever characteristic you think you like in this music. There's already a series of three full length albums between 2020 and 2023 for you to get an idea about what kind of hazy, polluted swamp you're stepping into, and right after that I'll be here to salt the wound with fourth and scarily distorted fourth record, Nefarious Scintillations.
Trying to point down certain specific riffs, tempos or sequences that you like in this maze of claustrophobic havoc that immediately bursts into motion with the opening track "Nefariously Scintillating through Vacant Galactic Reservoirs", is a task that's laughably impossible. Imagine taking the work ethic of Defeated Sanity and drenching it into the poison of Demilich (what a legacy this band has proven to have left behind after all), then slashing the musical horror that arises with a flair of tech-death as in Suffocation, all delivered on a psychotomimetic rage and a sound straight from a hallucinatory experience of an altered reality. I'm still in the process of absorbing Kakothanasy's new album right before the end of the year, and here comes another equally unfathomable but instantly extraordinary release, from just one guy (only member is Evan Daniele) no less?
A ceaseless riffing barrage always works against the listener's sanity. At its slower moments, the album works its way through with more patience, and the more expressed guitar lines swell and stress on how otherworldly Dead and Dripping aim to sound here. It mostly works, and it's a challenge. My favorite moments are the mindblowing two-minute "Sickeningly Vague Anatomical Silhouettes", the insane acoustic guitar intro of the last track "An Utterly Tenantless World of Aeons-Long Death" and the general guitar lines in "Horrifying Glimpses Into Inconceivably Demented Cityscapes", and "Swollen Torsos Adorned with Pustulating Hexagonal Crania". Really, try listening to these all at once. If there's one issue that can be more difficult to put up with on Nefarious Scintillations, it's the Demilich / almost Inquisition level of caricature froggy vocals.
The fans of these vocals are superfans, and the rest stand on the opposite side, but I can't decide where I wanna be on the matter. As impressed I am with the music, it's a persistent need from inside that makes me want to listen to vocalists with the growl of a thousand mythic giants, and I somehow feel like it always fits to the track better like that, but it's probably not the case for Nefarious Scintillations. Dead and Dripping does well with these choices and the record has so much effort and content in it, that it's just worth it whoever you are, and wherever you may reside. As far as I'm concerned, the foreseeable future is paved with many re-listens and possible notes, just to make sure I've noticed all there's to notice, i.e. a losing battle. Endless creativity, blackened rifts, cerebral eulogies and everything nefarious and trippy, in the scariest sense of the word. That's Evan's world.
Release: November 28th, 2025 // Transcending Obscurity Records
Rating: 4 out of 5
