Gonemage – Master Of Disgust EP
Gonemage – Master Of Disgust EP
Self-Released
Release Date: 13.05.22
Running Time: 19:21
Review by Dark Juan
9/10
Hello, dear friends. It is I, Dark Juan, and I am slightly annoyed because the furry parasites I share my home with (no, NOT Mrs Dark Juan) are being a set of quadruped irritants. They are up and down more times than a whore’s knickers and also in and out of the house more often and faster than said whore being serviced by a man who’s done a gram of Billy. I tested a theory as to just how long it would be before one of the fur-covered shit machines would disturb me when I started crafting this piece of information transmission for your delectation.
One minute and thirty-fucking-four seconds. And that was a combination attempt from Hodgson Biological-Warfare, General Sir Zeusington Zeus VC, KCVG, DFC and Bar, MM, DFM, Croix de Guerre and Order Of The Red Banner, and the Dread Lord Igor Egbert Bryan Clown-Shoe Cleavage-Hoover (who has now been christened Princess Susan in my house because of his absolute insistence on being transported downstairs via the medium of indoctrinated human to his food in the morning) rushing outside and shouting at EVERY SINGLE passerby. All Hodgson wanted to do was go out and quietly sunbathe because he is a goodboi, even if his arse appears to be requisitioned from Satan’s own personal collection of torture devices. The other two, on the other hand, are complete knobheads and seem to regard the road outside Dark Juan Terrace as their own personal property and that the Ocado man is out to rape and kill us all and must be defended against at all costs. Having seen the prices of Ocado stuff, financial abuse appears to be a given at the very least… Saying that, if my abode was invaded by nefarious persons, Igor would do the shouting about it, Hodgson would do nothing to defend me but will shred anyone trying to hurt Mrs Dark Juan into a bloody pile of human spaghetti, and Zeus would just show them where the fucking family silver was and sell us all out for a sausage. Note that your correspondent does not even FEATURE in the furry terrorists’ list of priorities, yet it is my bank account that gets roughly fucked up the arse every time (sans lubrication) every time one of the wankers gets ill…
Dogs are rubbish. Something that isn’t rubbish, however, is the platter I am currently spinning, being Gonemage’s “Master Of Disgust”. This nasty little 5 track EP is the brainchild of Cara Neir main man Galimgim (or Garry Brents to his mates), and is loosely based around the famed computer game character Wario from the Mario games. Where it gets really interesting is the fact that Galimgim has fused some absolutely filthy and uncompromising blackened death metal with chiptunes and old SNES samples. Also, Gonemage is a one man show, so there’s been a bloke painstakingly sampling all the old sound effects from SNES and Game Boy Mario games, and then writing tunes around them, and then carefully integrating those samples into his songs. That’s a work rate that needs to be applauded.
The EP opens with the title track “Master Of Disgust” with a cheery “Here we go!” before descending instantly into musical anarchy where absolutely filthy DM guitars vie for your attention with contrapuntal cheery electronic bleeps and blips and it appears that Galimgim has been at the whizz again as he launches into hyperspeed from a dead stop in less than three seconds. The velocity is pretty astonishing, actually. And he doesn’t slow down. This is not music to have sex to. It would be over in four seconds and that would include the first bite of pizza, such is the mental musical speed. Also, having Wario chuntering away in the background would put you right off your vinegar stroke.
The second song, “Mega Toss Into Crypt”, doesn’t dial down the madness either, terminal velocity blastbeats slamming the unfortunate listener straight back against the wall and pummeling them until they submit, a bloodied, panting, broken mess, with the same pseudo-cheerful chiptune squeals and squeaks sneaking around in the back of the mix, like shadow-dwelling predators just waiting for their moment to strike. Colossal, mountainous riffs batter you around the head as the electronic element slashes your Achilles tendons so you can’t run away any more and the percussion sets the time for your subsequent torture. Very fast.
“WarioWare – Possessed Console” reduces the speed very slightly, as the electronics crawl all over the face of the song like little, brightly coloured, highly venomous spiders. When I say the speed is reduced slightly, it’s still lightning fast, just not as fast as the first two songs. I think Galimgim has some issues he needs addressing by professionals. His music is absolutely insane, and therefore by extension so is he. You know what I mean, the kind of person that speaks in a strange high voice and stares intently at a point somewhere over and behind your left shoulder. Like Jehovah’s Witnesses do when they are trying to make you join the Church and flog you copies of Watchtower, and instead you want to be rid of them because you’re in the middle of a Satanic ritual and the debasement of that nubile young virgin won’t be doing itself on the altar, so you quietly smile and invite them in, close and lock the door behind you and grin as you raise your sacrificial dagger behind their God-fearing backs and wonder how their God will protect them now after you cut their spinal columns and turn them into basically heads on a stick, a la Mick Taylor in Wolf Creek. Praying doesn’t help you when you can’t talk…
Galimgim is also possessed of a voice (or just possessed) that surely belongs to some demon from at least the third circle of Dante’s Inferno – a guttural, volcanic grunt that hints at imminent lava flows exploding from the subterranean and is spectacularly violent and aggressive, and this is at odds with the electronic element to the music. The cheeriness and exuberance of the chiptunes and samples form an otherworldly, decidedly uncomfortable counterpoint to the metal, but rather than distracting from the music or just being an irritant, they have a scratchy, predatory quality to them that enhances rather than detracts from the musical narrative.
The EP closes with “Foul Portal To Delirium”. This is a fully electronic piece that is replete with samples, yet it still has a gnarled and grotesque quality – like a circus from hell. Brightly painted clowns and ringmasters and gymnasts entertain a crowd in the Big Top, but you start to notice little details… The tent is made from dyed skins sewn together, and you see a nipple in the tanned dermis. The clowns caper but you see the buckets of stuff they are throwing at each other is actually gore and blood, and their teeth are sharpened, lethal points designed especially for tearing flesh and the ringmaster bellows his commands to his performers in a voice that echoes from otherworldly, sepulchral depths. The trapeze artists drop lower and lower from the heights of the human skin big top and you can see the flash of wickedly sharp blades attached to their lithe legs and ankles and the gymnasts flip and tumble and release clouds of neurotoxins from pouches attached to their wrists. Lion tamers whip crudely stitched together chimeric crosses of man and beast, their bladed bullwhips eliciting whimpers from cruelly abused human mouths… And through it all, the calliope. The mechanical, steam powered music from the calliope cheerfully underpins the beginning of the slaughter of the crowd. The infernal calliope becomes ever louder and ever faster until it is a screaming, colossal thing that fills the entire universe and all you can hear is the white noise of the calliope and all you can see is a combination of red and black as your nervous system collapses from a combination of sound and neurotoxin…
Well, that was rather more of an instinctive reaction than I was expecting from this record. Gonemage are the calliope to that circus of horrors.
Fuck.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System awards Gonemage 9/10 for a frankly fucking brilliant little EP that manages to beguile and bloody you in equal parts. A mark has been deducted because I feel that the mix of chiptune, Super Mario Brothers and superturbo blackened death might be a little too challenging to some metalheads. But it is a fantastic record if you want to be brutal with a sense of warped fun.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Master Of Disgust
02. Mega Toss Into Crypts
03. WarioWare – Possessed Console
04. Demon Head And The Reign Of Stench
05. Foul Portal To Delirium
LINE-UP:
Galimgim (Garry Brents) – Guitars, Bass, Drum Programming, Synth, Vocals.
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.