Sanguisugabogg - Tortured Whole (2021)

The viral success of the caveman stable soon led Sanguisugabogg to a deal with Century Media, bringing this underground sensation to a broader level of visibility, an amusing contrast against their smeared logo and warped cover art which begs you not to understand it. I'm not complaining, I bought a long sleeve around this time, maybe just before the album with similar artwork and green logo on yellow material, which I still love to this day. Thankfully, Tortured Whole is both more of the same we heard on Pornographic Seizures, and simultaneously a little more expansive due to the 34 minute playground in which the Ohio group, at this point a trio, found itself. I hate to call anything like this 'mature', but this certainly hears the group settling into a more seasoned
confidence with their loping, simple-minded brutality.

Two things that stood out immediately were the way the rims and other drums popped out to a degree that was almost obnoxious if it wasn't so loveable, and Devin's vocals seem to get even more efficient and guttural, sometimes almost as toilet-bowl as an Antti Bowman. The riffs sound even more chunky than on the EP, and at the same time even a little more 'progressive' in how they wander the frets to create little grooves and moods that remind me of anything from Cannibal Corpse to 90s Death. For a band so crammed into its own entrail-strewn niche, I never get the feeling that they're uninterested in offering a degree of variation for the listener. The rhythm guitar chug is amazing on its own, almost impossible to resist as it starts plunking along, but there are a few more layers here thanks to how they effortlessly mix aesthetics from the late 80s OSDM to the brutal low end of the next decade. The bass lines here are even louder than the previous release, and while they're not always doing much by themselves, they help the album feel like it standing astride you and just beating you slowly to a pulp with two fat fists, ground and fucking pound dudes.

What I didn't expect were the horror-synth interludes courtesy of Cody, who was already pulling double duty on the bass and drums. These aren't your usual neon-lit sort, danceable sort, but more something you'd hear in an obscure, low budget horror film or Giallo, usually from Europe. They're both really good and actually appear at precisely the right time for you to take a breath from the beatings, and in fact I think they're cool enough that I wouldn't have minded more, perhaps integrated directly into the brutal tunes as intros or interludes. Regardless, they help flesh out the experience on the whole, and right as you've escaped they'll drag you back in with some ridiculous chugging grooves. Tortured Whole is a good debut which proves the band wasn't just a flash in the pan, and that bigger label exposure was not about to soften the impact of their unforgiving knuckle sandwich aesthetics. It's no masterpiece, but it's got a timeless attitude about it which I always appreciate in the moment.

Verdict: Win [8/10]

https://sanguisugabogg.com/