Savage Pleasure Savage Pleasure
- Format
12 Inch
Black
£21.00
‘Is it a dream or just an illusion? Engulfed by the fire and flames, Fallen dogs assail their masters, The end comes as foretold’ (The Sickening Fear)
New York’s Savage Pleasure have arrived, and their self-titled debut LP is an impressively realised one. By fusing crust-fuelled 1980s’ UK anarcho-punk with the primordial rawness of first wave death metal, the band have honed a battery of visceral ferocity. Eschewing grandstand moments, it is built, instead, through relentlessly skilful layering and fiercely crafted dynamics to create an utterly all-enveloping sense of the darkness descending.
Indeed, it is an album steeped in a darkly contagious sense of drama. The bleakly resonant bass and primitive-leaning drums provide a rock-solid base. The harshly dissonant rhythm guitars unleash swells of bruising, muscular riffage, with particular savagery on The Sickening Fear and The Glorious Descent. Meanwhile, infectiously melancholic leads are braided throughout the onslaught, most notably, perhaps, on The Blistering Plague.
Similarly, the coarse, guttural vocals roar their apocalyptic narrative with an unexpected dexterity, whether in the forlorn cry at the pounding climax of The Sentry or the snarled eruption during the groove laden The Reaper’s Scythe. Further texture is introduced through the dungeon synth and choral vocal intertwined intro track, The Shimmering Dark, and the sombre acoustic guitar and haunting spoken word laced through the crushing closer, Chasms Of Distant Dreams. A thoroughly savage pleasure indeed.