Sanguisugabogg - Tortured Whole (2021)

Sanguisugabogg make burpy death metal—the type of wet, gurgly, stinky racket that sounds like a guy belching up his lunch into the microphone while all hell breaks loose around him. It rules. The Ohio quartet formed in 2019 and quickly put out a tossed-off demo called Pornographic Seizures. They had no plans to turn the band into a full-time project, but the four-song release quickly took off in the underground death metal world and Sanguisugabogg became one of the genre's most buzzy up-and-comers. They were already a hot tip on the live circuit for fun-loving sets that traded the idiom's traditional stoicness for goofy potty humor before Century Media Records, one of the most venerable labels in extreme music, signed them for their debut album Tortured Whole.

The record is the type of over-the-top chaos you'd expect from a group whose name is a portmanteau of "sanguisuga" (Latin for "bloodsucker") and "bogg" (British slang for "toilet"). With song titles like "Menstrual Envy," "Gored In The Chest," "Urinary Ichor," and "Dick Filet," their specialty is splatter-horror goriness with a giddy sense of sophomoric humor. Consider them one of those knowingly preposterous B-rate slasher films transformed into a genuinely talented death metal band. The riffs harken back to the downtuned brutality of Cannibal Corpse and Six Feet Under, and there's no doubt that these guys can play. But the lyrics actually flip the script on the tired death metal trope of fantastical violence against women: all of these songs are about torturing and deforming sexual assailants, pedophiles, and other morally compromised men. If you have the stomach for it, and/or the capacity to headbang for as long as these songs necessitate, then Sanguisugabogg are the ideal fit for those who like their death metal with every extreme cranked to ten.