Review: Rudimentary Peni - Death Church

Like a mucus projectile, each track on Death Church splats and sticks. There’s no room for interruption or counter-argument – questions at the end, please – and in the split-second of recharge at the end of each burst (dimming cymbal abuse fallout, guitar strings choked to silence like a motorised chainsaw grabbed by the blade), I can already hear the next toothed sentiment coming right to the boil. This was the debut full length of Rudimentary Peni, but the execution speaks of a bitter taste that has been clamming up the mouth for years – Death Church captures the 30 minutes directly after that first domino is pushed, declaring a message that has long fortified in its every syllable, as assured and satisfying as a hand-assembled tower of dynamite coming to eruption.

The chords bend through movements that feel fundamentally sick: “Love Is Not” stalls as though it’s running at a brick wall for its whole two minutes, while “Happy Farm” moans and rasps through a miserable minor key of lopsided tuning. All the while, Nick Blinko is breathlessly babbling the verses, plucking out the punctuation so that each word can jam itself in the hole left by the one before. It’s half-sung, although the diplomacy of melody often gets shunted out by Blinko’s barks of disgust. “The tradition you use to hide animal murder is nothing but a thin disguise,” he strains during “Pig In A Blanket”, as the whole band accelerates like a free-wheeling mine cart; beyond its usual mid-pace that feels burdened by the weight of its own revulsion, buoyed into obliterative terminal velocity by the downstrokes that shunt the wheels into motion. A really, really gruesome wet heave.