Pissgrave – Malignant Worthlessness

In the nearly sixty years that we, the public have been beholden to the popular cultural phenomenon that is Heavy Metal we have witnessed the culmination of decades of performative technical innovation and evolutionarily eras of morbid songcraft. Alas, as with many a concerned parent or the thousands of participants within the movement of the 1980-90s Satanic Panic will demonstrate that the genre and it’s legions of fans will, from time to time, be called to answer the ever looming, decaying elephant in the room that begs the question of the morality of extreme entertainment.

Philadelphia’s Pissgrave is one such act where the lurching, spasming and pulsating anomalous horror that formulates their music is so extreme and so grotesquely depraved that it could induce winces from even the most hardened veteran of gore and extreme ultra-violent art. Being snapped up by the prestigious Extreme Metal and Avant-Garde crossover label Profound Lore Records shortly after the release of the band’s 2014 demo tape and the formation of a partnership with producer Arthur Rizk whose production credits include the likes of Primitive Man and Blood Incantation. Rizk would subsequently produce the band’s raw and landmark debut full length; 2014’s Suicide Euphoria and 2019’s slightly more controlled albeit still abundantly hideous sophomore album; 2019’s ‘Posthumous Humiliation’.

Which brings us to ‘Malignant Worthlessness’. Rumoured to serve as the final Pissgrave album and a culmination in what could be the ugliest metal trilogy of the last twenty years. With Rizk again at the production helm, the band wastes not a single millisecond in drenching you back into the bathtub of liquified human remains that is the Pissgrave sound. Whilst not as pavement draggingly raw as ‘Suicide Euphoria’, the album finds a no man’s land middle ground between that album’s naked tonality and Posthumous Humiliation’s comparative clarity. It’s hard to draw comparisons to other bands when it comes to Pissgrave as their sound is so uniquely Pissgrave. Tim Mellon’s mutated and zombified quasi-Deicide-esque vocals are even more threatening here than on any Pissgrave release before it and they are embellished with extra unsettling muscle due to the clever use of additional vocal effects. The busyness/clarity of the mix allows the guitars more room to swarm around the musical presentation like a rampant cloud of hornets.

Possibly the most important thing to note about Pissgrave’s approach to total violence is the almost traditional approach to chaotic oblivion. While infinite Slam bands and Brutal Technical Death outfits may feebly attempt to creative the most violent music in existence but fall horrendously short due to an unoriginal over reliance on a massive low end with guitars down tuned to the limits of human hearing and monotone gurgled vocals. Pissgrave doesn’t follow any shallow convention and it’s this same approach that, in this crowded space, makes them so unrivalled. Album closer ‘Mystical Obscenities’ climbs through a hyperbolic tremolo picked structure that pins the listener down with more strength than one human could ever hope to escape from before the band finally converges on a single repetitive riff, a final wailing and ricocheting solo takes place and then an unstoppable wall of distorted drone noise ingests everything. It’s the audible equivalent of having all sense of free will, consent and choice taken away from you. You are just there, helpless as the thousands upon thousands of shiny and pulsing maggots begin to consume your paralysed living body.

I bring morality into question here because Pissgrave are notorious for having some of the most abhorrent album artwork in existence. The real life cover image used for ‘Malignant Worthlessness’ of a maggot ridden body is no exception. The promotional image is a cropped version however Profound Lore released the full picture on release day, it’s truly vile. The individuals represented on the covers for these albums have all clearly met atrocious and horrific ends and the fact that the band has chosen to use these borderline illegal feeling images for the album artwork when these people have no say in a band using their demise as artwork is where my morality for enjoying this music is questioned. Is this ok? Is this not? I suppose what I can say is that Pissgrave has at least made me question my views on art and that is something that in this extreme field where few acts ever really push any true boundaries beyond plain instrumental technicality is what also makes Pissgrave oddly special. Have this important Philadelphia quartet has quite literally pushed the boundaries of… extremity?

If this is the final Pissgrave album then they have gone out with not a bang; but with a pus filled nuclear mushroom cloud. Malignant Worthlessness is my favourite Pissgrave album and concludes a trilogy of albums that features some of the most inhumanly horrid and grim music around, and the band’s legacy is that of one of the most important Metal bands of the last ten years.