Vermin In Green
Attention all blast fiends, come and savour the deliciousness of the decaying and the dank, a deep and devilishly dark delicacy, handpicked and delivered to your door for your aural consumption. Our friends TBDM have returned with album number nine ‘Verminous’ complete with an enviable luminous green artwork to make your eyes water. Let’s venture down, down, deeper, and deeper into the labyrinth and raise the rat infestation and other foul creatures of the night ( leaving no MP unturned) to wreak havoc and change this landscape into a deathscape. Quite fitting really as we find ourselves mid-pandemic, lost, confused and sick.
First off is the title track ‘Verminous’ and the timely ‘pandemic impending’ shows insight and courage to speak up. A stellar combination of vocal skill and tuning allows the growls and screeches to sit neatly beside the 1.47 death in melodic interlude riff.
‘Godlessly’ comes at you at full pelt, raining down those fret and bass blows on your sorry little head, and with the words ‘all gods died the moment we fell from grace’ reflect and genuflect, may the Lord have mercy on your soul. An ode to the ultimate fiend himself, Dracula is next in who will volunteer in the ‘Removal Of The Oaken Stake’, I can’t my friends, I’m washing my hair, but you go ahead. Pull the pin from the grenade and run like hell in the other direction as this solid piece of riffery comes chasing after you. That introduction my friends, mental I tell ya! Another monster from history, Jack The Ripper, appears here as TBDM give us a lesson in Biology in ‘The Leather Apron’s Scorn’ and ‘How Very Dead’ with gory details of precision incision and savage mutilations. The bridge at 2.05 on ‘HVD’ is bloodcurdling to say the least. Feel the liquid green poison coat your throat and slide effortlessly into your waiting stomach. As it works through your internal system, spare a thought for ‘The Wereworm’s Feast’ an imaginary tale of becoming a worm instead of a wolf. The ‘pearlescent maggots dwelling within dead flesh’ crave your corpse.
The pre-chorus and chorus are beautiful to listen to, alluring, and harbouring those dark Gothic, mysterious tones. Take a breather for 0.49 in ‘A Womb In Dark Chrysalis’ and then rise up to face your horror in ‘Dawn Of Rats’ and ‘when you’d felt you’re being watched, you were indeed’. One for the James Herbert (RIP) fanatics like myself, creepy, sinister and probably my favourite lyric of the year- I know there’s still time but ‘ when the silken robes of sodomy fell vacant at your feet’ is way ahead in this game.
This record is feral; unkempt and quite dangerous, which is exactly the point as it mirrors what we are enduring, who can say what the answers are, shall we just rip everything up and start again? Or shall we use this power of music and words to stand with TBDM and other robust and fearless artists to fight for a better world?
Shake hands with this green-eyed monster, we will overcome and we will look back to a time when everything went black for real.
Azra Pathan
The Black Dahlia Murder – Verminous out now via Metal Blade.