Track Premiere: Protrusion – “The Last Suppuration”
Lil’ bump for that hump day slump.
Members of Indiana death metal outfit Protrusion may have crossed your path in some form or another already, be it with their 2023 self-titled demo or with one of the many other bands that the members are involved in: Emulsified, Human Filleted, Found Hanging, to name just a few. All of those are firmly in the realm of brutal death metal, and given that the band recruited Tony Tipton from 90s gore fiends Regurgitation for their upcoming debut The Last Suppuration, you might assume more of the same is in store. You wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but I think the title track, which we’re happy to premiere here today, might have more in store than you’d expect.
Rather than blasting right out the gate, the song takes a moment to build up with a nice, melodic guitar lead, and even when the amazingly burpy gutturals of Colin Foster (Found Hanging, ex-Dawn of Dementia) set in, the band keeps it pretty chill, residing in doomy territory for most of the track. This leaves a lot of upward mobility that allows them to play around with the tempo later on, going on short sprints carried by blasts or the double bass before falling back into mid-tempo sections with an eerie atmosphere. Highlights include the the sick bass part around 2:30 and the (perhaps surprisingly) classy guitar solo in the final third of the song, which was partially provided by producer Tipton.
All in all, it’s a very skilled mix of brutal death and death doom, pulling from classics like Suffocation while including a smattering of equally old school, but more oddball acts like Demilich and their disciples. Foster says about the song:
‘The Last Suppuration” is our own personal monolith of the grim and gritty atmosphere of death metal roots that we seek to resurrect by combining morbid, yet accessible songwriting with gruesome, dark-humored and twisted storytelling.
Morbid yet accessible is exactly how I like my death metal, and there’ll be more where that came from once the album drops on March 13.
Cassette versions will be handled by Unholy Domain and Iron Fortress Records, while CDs will be handled by Sevared Records. Pre-orders start this Friday; until then, you can get acquainted with Protrusion’s earlier material (all of which will feature on the album) on their Bandcamp page.
