Review Summary: I can't believe it's Subterranean Existential Warfare.
The human era is almost over.
Subterranean Existential Warfare takes place in a future twenty years after the nuclear collapse of mankind, where creatures mutated by radiation threaten the final vestiges of humanity which have been pushed underground and gridlocked into bloody warfare. This is an album of stunning thematic clarity and visceral terror which is tied together by voice samples and environmental soundscapes that fully immerse you in the narrative. It is also one of the most ignorant pieces of music I’ve ever heard. Let me explain. Brutal death metal has long been split into two camps, with some bands branching in a direction where brutality is achieved through a show of pure speed and technicality, and others devolving, breaking the genre down to it’s most basic elements and then blending them into a thick slurry of intestines and cartilage. Snare go PANG, guitar go duunndunnn, bass go bluuurp, vocal go blurhhgugurggrg, job is done. Diphenylchloroarsine is in the latter camp, but this reductivist approach to death metal only plays in favour of the atmospheric lucidity.
For an entire hour,
Subterranean Existential Warfare stomps, kicks and explodes out of a pure compulsion to degenerate. The entire recording sounds like it is decayed, rotten and blown out—pulled straight from the chest cavity of some bloodthirsty abomination. Sludgy mid paced riffs are dragged through a pool of human remains, dancing in tandem with a bass tuned so low that it registers as more of a threatening, extraterrestrial warble than a stringed instrument. Every hit of the drums feels like a surgical necessity, and they pull a heavy weight in supplying the album with some tempo deviation, often speeding up or slowing down as the goliath riffs and inhuman squeals remain steadfast in the wake of assault. Cinematic bass drops are commonplace in brutal death metal, and while I’ll admit they are abused on this record, they are also thematically consistent with a violent subterranean war, and further aid in the immersion. It is easy to imagine the ceilings of defunct subway tunnels collapsing on the bodies of man and creature alike as your speakers crumble to the sound of nuclear explosions.
You could criticize this album for being one note and obnoxious, and I would not necessarily disagree. On a surface level, the actual music has a neanderthal charm at best, chugging it’s way through eleven tracks with the grace of an ape slamming a rock into another ape’s head. But somehow, despite the hour long runtime, this album almost always breezes by without feeling redundant or tedious. The aura of doom that emanates from every track, the haunting piano interlude of “Intermission 235”, the nuclear bass drops, the collage of horror pieced together by the final voice transmissions of fallen soldiers, it all makes you feel like you’re really living in the fictional world that Diphenylchloroarsine created. There are more than enough nuances in the songwriting department to be picked up on by the attentive and faithfully patient, but it’s the hellish atmosphere—executed with a master’s touch—that keeps me crawling back into the subterranean darkness.
