Onchocerciasis Esophagogastroduodenoscopy – The Fallen Lament
Onchocerciasis Esophagogastroduodenoscopy – The Fallen Lament
Stillbirth Records/Gore House Productions
Release Date: 19/07/24
Running Time: 09:40
Review by Dark Juan
Score: 9/10
Good afternoon, my hordes. All three of you. It is I, Leclerc… I mean Dark Juan. If you are of a certain age, British, and I say, “Oooooh, Rene” in a husky voice you will know exactly where that excuse for a joke came from. For the rest of you who aren’t from the Sceptred Isles of Great Britain, I will explain.
Back before cancel culture and silliness, like nowadays where the likes of Kyle Gass are getting vilified by a bunch of knotted knickered simpletons for actually having an opinion and a joke, regardless of who or what it’s about, there was the golden age of the British sitcom. Yes, Minister was one of the greatest pieces of political satire ever written. And, around the same time, the BBC came up with the bright idea of setting a situation comedy in Occupied France in World War Two revolving around the café of Rene Artois. Many, many stereotypes were employed – the French were feckless adulterers with elderly relatives in their attics, the Germans stultifyingly boring, fat, drunk on their own power, and stupid, the English boneheaded, posh and stubborn and just as stupid as the Germans, the Italians flamboyant and cowardly and more interested in their uniforms and looking good than anything else. It sounds like a total recipe for disaster, doesn’t it? However, what made it magic is that everyone had the piss taken out of them equally, be they German, British, French or Italian, and that there were also matters of great subtlety afoot – the garrison of Germans, for example, are all cowardly, fat ersatz soldiers and woman-chasers with the exception of one Leutnant Gruber on leave in France from Stalingrad, who is a decorated combat veteran, insanely brave, fearsomely intelligent and also more camp than a row of tents and obviously fancies the arse off Rene. However, he is by no means a Nazi. He’s just a German soldier. It also shows the bravery of the French under occupation – Rene is harbouring captured British airmen, is an active member of the Resistance (who keep turning up at his back door) and is doing what he can to survive. It’s brilliant. If very much a product of its time.
I wrote that because I have been listening to something truly vomit-inducing and I frankly needed to write about something light-hearted and whimsical, because Onchocerciasis Esophagogastroduodenoscopy (this is going to be the only time I type their full name because they are arguably worse than Eximperituserqethhzebibšiptugakkathšulweliarzaxułum for word salad – henceforth they shall be known as Dave 2, as Eximperitus were referred to as Dave throughout their whole review several years ago) have released “The Fallen Lament”, a four-track EP. This band, hailing from Quebec City in Canada, appear to be just a little bit deranged. Guitarist Alice Simard appears to be a tiny little thing wearing cute little cat ears, yet somehow manages to radiate more malice than the whole interior of Wakefield Prison during a full-on riot in a single picture. Dark Juan likes her for this.
Anyway, after playing Dave 2’s EP, I have had to disinfect and thoroughly clean the now terrorised and bio-compromised Platter of Splatter™, which has finally lived up to its name and played some Grindcore and Splattercore, mixed with some deeply experimental (emphasis on the mental) music to produce something that defies categorisation. Dave 2 (their name is a load of word salad about a parasitic worm that makes you blind and some kind of medical intervention) are truly disturbing. They sound like the noises you might hear in an abattoir killing off excess children. Grinding Industrial maschinenklang meets screaming human flesh as chains clank and rattle and strip the skin of living people clean from their flesh with electrically driven saws. The stench of blood and offal and human waste permeates everything as children scream and cry and gibber as the production line they are manacled to drags them ever nearer to their grisly, pain and blood soaked end in the maw of screaming, serrated machinery than inches ever closer to them, only to come out of the other side of the death machine in neatly packaged hunks of flesh, all wrapped in plastic and ready for sale and consumption.
Dave 2’s music makes Dark Juan’s imagination turn children into a mere source of protein and imagine a world where they can be sold for food. Cage upon rusty cage of children for sale in the wet markets around the world. You can bet your bottom dollar that man will eat child and woman first before they turn on each other. Dave 2’s music is the soundtrack to that nightmarish vision. Utterly uncompromising and vicious – it is either horrendously grinding and slow or moves faster than the bolt on a captive bolt pistol. It is industrial-level slaughterhouse music for seriously sick people.
Apparently, the first two pieces on this EP have lyrics. You’d never have guessed considering the sounds of two people simultaneously disgorging vomit and giving painful birth to clawed and knife-skinned demons through their chests. Yes, in true Splattercore fashion the vocals are utterly incomprehensible, sound more like people being gutted without anaesthesia, and appear to emanate from previously unknown body cavities. To call it singing would be to liken the screaming of an artillery shell just before impact to actual syllabification. However, it is absolutely one of the most brutal things I have heard in a long time.
The last two tracks on the EP (according to the thoughtfully provided lyric sheet, and this amused me greatly) have no lyrics. No shit, Sherlock. This means that the last two tracks on the EP are composed of inchoate screaming, demonic toilet flushing, explosions and puking up bloody chunks of human offal all over the fucking recording studio. I pity the owner and the ridiculous clean-up job he had on his hands when Dave 2 vacated the premises. Must have looked like a Carcass fever dream…
Which leads me to try to describe the sound of this three-piece of seriously disturbed persons. Classic Grindcore in the vein of early Napalm Death and early Carcass is slammed at ridiculous velocities into the realm of Prog. The production of the record is supposed to sound rudimentary, but it’s a meisterwerk in how to make a band sound good regardless of what style of music they are playing. I can clearly hear everything, and the use of voice as another instrument on the last two songs on the record is fucking brilliant, even if Dark Juan is concerned that Dave 2 is opening up portals to a particularly disturbing realm of hell where industrialised, ritualised murder is the order of the day, for eternity. This EP is definitely for the lovers of the extreme – fans of Deathspell Omega, Defeated Sanity, and Ulcerate will dig the fuck out of this record. So will fans of Dehumanizing Itatrian Worship, whose Kiryu Zhang contributes vocals on the last track of the EP, ‘Facial Gutting’.
How does Dark Juan score this fucking thing then? Let us consult the Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System (Le système breveté d’évaluation des éclaboussures de sang Dark Juan. Bonjour amis canadiens francophones! Une fois de plus, votre pays a époustouflé Dark Juan avec le niveau de violence qui semble se cacher sous la peau de votre peuple incroyablement poli. Avec ce groupe et Protosequence, je suis quelque peu inquiet pour la santé mentale de tous les Canadiens! Est-ce que tout va bien?) for advice:
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System awards Dave 2 (I am still not typing their egregious name) 9/10 for some classic sounding Splattercore welded to a strong Progressive edge dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. A mark was deducted for it only being a four track EP when I wanted to immerse myself more fully in Dave 2’s blood-soaked, nightmarish universe and ten minutes is simply not enough.
TRACKLISTING:
01. The Fallen Lament, Paralytikus Ascends
02. Warmth of The Womb
03. Stult Carnality
04. Facial Gutting
LINE-UP:
The Popuko – Guitars, Drums, Bass, Backing Vocals
Alice Simard – Guitars, Drums
Jesse Agiomamitis – 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.
