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TOUGHNESS
The Prophetic Dawn

Godz Ov War Productions (2022)
Rating: 9/10

Hopefully the bland band name won’t mean these guys slip under the radar because this is some seriously heavy Polish death metal that channels the likes of Incantation and Demilich. From its thick, doom laden beginnings through to its clogged heart and then out of its oozing backside The Prophetic Dawn exists as one of the year’s best death metal releases.

This debut slurps in its vocals as if “singer” Bartek Domański is chomping on a fresh corpse, slapping his sticky lips with delight. The guitar barrage on this ungodly manifestation is dense, sludgy and suffocating as the quartet rattles off ten acts of powerful, perverse cuts straight the era that brought us classics from Convulse and the aforementioned outfits.

The creepy bass threads within opening shroud ‘Misanthropy Within Transcendence’ flick at the nerves causing involuntary spasms, while the fuzzed axe work lumbers like a nonchalant serial killer loping away down a secluded back alley after another hideous crime.

Toughness deserve to give themselves a far better moniker for such a filthly, down-tuned heap of morbidity as ‘The Infernal Travelings’ squelches with menace, festering like a compost heap consisting of bubbling blood and coiled innards as the vocal growls act as mere burps within the pile of decomposing gore.

Such is the weight of Toughness that even when they pick up pace the humidity bogs it all down as the clanking percussion of Damian Jaworski works in miserable tandem with the bass of Ziemowit Chalciński.

‘In Perversity Premonition’ is another putrid pile, steaming like a lump of excreted gut swarming with flies and billowing with a vile odour. Again there are those chaotic and demented segments; spasmodic charges like some algae-ridden beast thrashing in its own depths before slipping back into the silt.

‘Forsaken Entity’ attempts to chug, but instead the combo treads through its own waste, slopping and sploshing around various turgid riffs to create even further bogginess. ‘Into Ether Decay’ brings the twanging bass to the fore again, and the title track is a nonsensical battering ram coughing up its own stomach lining as the riffs loosely charge, fed further bones by the menacing vocal gurgles.

‘Psychological’ ominously trudges deeper into the pit of despair with its aching joints heaving under its weight, while ‘Other Insalubrious Beings’ and ‘Synthetic Perplexity’ gnaw with grotesque greed, feasting of fatty scraps and rubbery afterbirth.

To an extent, not even that cover art can prepare you for the dense, infected layers within this mulch of madness as Toughness drags you into its mire and with every gulp forces you to become one with its own membranous web of repugnance. There is no escape.

Neil Arnold

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