Description

Four years and one pandemic on from Orificial Purge, Vastum, the longest running band on the 20 Buck Spin roster, offers up it s fifth bludgeoning document of psychic malaise and lost faith with Inward To Gethsemane. As before, the abject disgust unsparingly captured in Vastum s unique approach continues to drape the music with an aura of discomfiting unease.

The cavernous density Vastum has made a core element of it s discography remains as inhuman as ever, continuing to delve into darker atmospheres, yet never devolving into ambient murk; on the contrary it s always punishing and with a fearsome momentum. The distinctively harrowing dual vocal attack of Daniel Butler and Leila Abdul-Rauf appears throughout Inward; the possessed narrators of Vastum s hellish underworld. Eight minute album closer Corpus Fractum manifests a transformative and even experimental side of the band musically and vocally, while sustaining the characteristic merciless power they are revered for across it s five albums. Between the sporadic but legendary live performances and a worshipped discography of modern era true death metal, Vastum has become a torchbearer of the grisly and grotesque underground, both within it s native Bay Area and well beyond. Inward To Gethsemane carves another notch in Vastum s totem of deviance.