Evaporated Sores
Ulcerous Dimensions
SCORE: 8 out of 10
Taking from already blackened genres like power-electronics, sludge, doom and death metal, Evaporated Sores dig deeper into the darkness to deliver one of the most extreme exercises in ugliness and brutality the year has seen.
This review doesn’t need an introduction, and not because the band is well known -this is actually their debut- rather because this album wastes no time from the moment you press play until it finally stops, allowing your heart rate to go back to normal (although it may take a while). Taking from already blackened genres like power-electronics, sludge, doom and death metal, Evaporated Sores dig deeper into the darkness to deliver one of the most extreme exercises in ugliness and brutality the year has seen.
The chaos ensued by the band is so harsh, the cross-over nature of the album may go unnoticed among all the shrieks, drum abuse and the ultra low, fat guitar tone. The brief passages in which the band is not going berserk, we can hear feedback piling up due to a heavy use of delay creating the abrasive, pulsating effect very common in power-electronics, and it sort of feels like an open window in which we can breathe something other than the toxicity emanated by the band; nonetheless, these moments are far from inducing a sense of calm. Ulcerous Dimensions is relentless all throughout and it rarely shows any mercy. Not a bad feature for a debut album.
“Claimed by Inertia” opens this nefarious portal with glitching feedback and a sludgy breakdown, and from there, the band just keeps pushing down towards the netherworld with the same violence groups like Primitive Man and Vermin Womb do, albeit it feels less polished and it sounds as if the album was recorded in a place even Ethan Lee McCarthy would think twice before going in. The only downside to the overwhelming extremeness Evaporated Sores deliver, is that we may become desensitized halfway through; the body can only take such a beating before going numb. Fortunately, the weakest link in all the album is also its shortest song (“Eonic Parallel”), and the closing track’s weird intervalic riff reminds us that we were actually feeling pleasure out of all the pain being inflicted upon us.
Evaporated Sores know how to deliver a punch whose effect will last long after the album is over, even if it means letting their experimental side take a back seat. I will admit that I was hoping for a more nuanced delivery in which the industrial and electronic aspect would feel more present, but then again -quoting from Liam Neeson in Batman Begins- this is not a dance. This is not a sophisticated take on textural or timbral exploration and the band definitively don’t present themselves as doing so. Evaporated Sores aimed to summon hell on earth through piercing cacophony and, boy, did they succeed.
