FUMING MOUTH - Last Day Of Sun
December 11, 2023, 11 months ago
(Nuclear Blast)
I love seeing these young death metal bands create their own community within the community and begin to forge identities: here on their second album, Fuming Mouth look to their contemporaries in Frozen Soul in doing the swampy, Floridian DM stomp, but there's a lot more to digest.
Huge, killer opener “Out Of Time” is just a massive, doomy DM trawl that almost casts a nervous glance to Neurosis; the feedback that opens follow-up “Respect And Blasphemy” foreshadows the d-beat DM to come. “The Silence Beyond Life” makes me think Deathwish Inc. in its heyday. That's an incredibly good opening trio of tunes, and when you add the very real emotional heft of this record being created after vocalist/guitarist Mark Whelan was face to face with death during a battle with cancer, it makes it all the heavier.
But he's back, and we're glad, and it gives this album that much more depth. I mean, it's impossible to hit much harder than “The Sign Of Pain”'s sludgedeath or “Leaving Euphoria”'s fever-dream indie/shoegaze (?!) melodies or “Burial Practices”' frantic vocal attack. “I'll Find You”'s relentlessness and “Postfigurement”'s epic, dissonant, and left-field closing just confirms what I was already suspecting.
With this ambitious, moving record, Fuming Mouth just placed themselves firmly at the top of the new-jack DM heap.
