Purulency - Transcendent Unveiling of Dimensions
“When the D&D Kids Start a Band”
Big Bear Buchko

 I have a deep appreciation for nerds. I was one – to a degree – growing up in the ‘90s on a steady diet of Genesis games, “choose your adventure” books, and Saturday morning cartoons. It was life, and life was good, despite the lack of social invites and ‘AFK’ relationships. For some, like me, it became a mark of nostalgia in our later years – usually with t-shirts, tattoos, and retro game nights with other, like-aged adults. For others though, Tolkien took a greater hold and would come to influence them in more ways than one might think possible. That is where Lovecraft alien band Purulency comes in.

Something strikes me early on, looking at… well, everything. The track titles. The album name. Hell, the band’s name as a whole. It’s all…. much. It’s all just so much. “Purulency.” Is it a word or death metal gibberish – like Sanguisugabogg or Chris Barnes (general)? I cave. I look. “Consisting of, containing, or discharging pus.” And I think… no one knew that. No one in the band knew that. Someone looked that up. They needed a band name, looked for something complex with a hard gross definition, and that’s what they chose.            Next, the album title: “Transcendent Unveiling of Dimensions.” Something about this puts steampunk on my tongue. It’s snake oil. It’s a thin-mustachioed man with a large, comical hat. It use many words when few words do. Something about it seems unnecessarily over the top, but I’m not going to judge the book by its… title and author’s name, so let’s have us an exceptional revealing of an aspect of a situation, problem, or thing in Transcendent Unveiling of Dimensions.

 “(Inside The) Arcane Hypogeum.” I’m going to say the good before I say the bad; it’s an atmospheric instrumental track. I like it. I’m not a huge fan of the rhythm guitar’s neck-pick-up-tone and chunky, warbly sound here, but it doesn’t detract from the quality of the song. (Just because I would’ve played it differently is in no way a point against them, just a narcissistic tweak I would have made.) Overall, it’s a great opening dirge, and you can imagine it being a staple intro for their live performances.

That all being said, my only real complaint is the very… very very very beginning of the song. I get what they’re going for with the kind of Cradle of Filth ethereal orchestral pomposity, but the program… or instrument… or whatever it is they used for the opening… it’s… it’s just so Garage Band. It doesn’t sound full. It doesn’t even sound completely in stereo, but a dry, midi-based, generic… Garage Band. It sounds like 2009 Apple Macbook iOS Garage Band. I’m pretty sure I’ve played this exact arrangement on my ex-fiancé’s purple Air laptop. It sounds cheap. And I complain about this only because it doesn’t fit the full, surrounding impact of the band coming in together moments later. It’s like a limp refrigerator salad before a fancy, well-cooked steak; it doesn’t add, it only subtracts, and doesn’t fit the overall quality of the song.

There’s also something to point out here, and it’s something probably only an old man like me would notice. In the digital, single-serving marketplace in which we live now, the Pink Floyd prog rock first-track-becoming-the-second-track mix doesn’t work. As in, they recorded one song at length, and then cut them into two, with the intent to blend seamlessly into each other. But considering most streaming services lag, or push-in ads, or auto-plays in shuffle, or pops up as a single on Spotify, or any of the other hundreds of ways (outside of a cassette tape or a vinyl record on a Crosby) in which this just would not work. It’s a touch that would’ve been amazing thirty+ years ago, but one that just does not work now. Again, not a point against them, just a jarring element you wouldn’t necessarily expect. But “Arcane Hypogem” becomes “Adrift in Festering Perpetuity,” and at this, it finally dawns on me what the titles and lyrical directions of this band reminds me of - Bioshock. The X-Box video game Bioshock. Again, snake oil, top hat, steampunk… it’s not a complaint, it's just an unusual juxtaposition. But Beyoncé makes country now, so whatever the hell nowadays, let’s move on.

“Adrift in Festering Perpetuity” is fun. This is a fun song. The guitars (handled by dueling threat pack Neal Williams and Garrett Morelock) are chasing, and hop back and forth with a great heavy metal Bugs Bunny electric charade that would unquestionably hit hard in a tiny venue mosh pit. The vocals are solid, but have been mixed so far to the back that they’re easy to lose in the sludge of the full band. But upon reading the press release for the band once again, I notice that Transcendent Unveiling of Dimensions is considered a “demo” release. Okay, that explains the mixing of the vocals. They get a pass with this detail, with the expectation that the full weight and strength of the singer will be handled properly on whatever well-mastered follow-up this band decides to put into motion through Pulverised Records.

“Xenolith Of Ruination.” Purulency has a sound. It’s a sound they’ve developed to be theirs, and they hang it onto hard, so much so that it was halfway through the third track before I realized it wasn’t still the track before it. There’s no immediate variation. There’s no change in tone or presentation. It’s just that band from the first and second song, here on a third. But a lack of variating texture is neither here no there; the guitars are still fun, the vocals are still too far back, and as far as a four-track demo goes, “Xenolith Of Ruination” is arguably the best cut on the slab. I like it. It’s good. It’s another that begs you to find this band and see them live, with the hopes that they’d be added to something like Chaos & Carnage in the near future.

The end of the album is clearly marked by “Devoured by the Sentient Nihility.” It’s the big song – where the band goes large and gives it their all. This is where they want to send you to the merch table. This entire record seems to be a sampling to sell what the band does live, and whether that’s their intention or not, it works. This would be a hell of a track to see in an intimate concert hall. It has lift and punch and dramatic overtones, a long and final crescendo of melodic synchronization, and then… clap clap clap   get to the merch table, buy a shirt.

Purulency’s Transcendent Unveiling of Dimensions doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it doesn’t really need to. It gives you what you came for; punishing guitars, blast beats, an And Justice for All-level of bass inclusion, and vocals you couldn’t possibly understand. It’s death metal, pure and simple, but with a musical flair in their inter-song change-ups that keeps it from fading into the ether like many other one-note hard metal acts who merely chug through their recordings. (And the high-energy Bugs Bunny guitars show up frequently, and they’re a welcome addition every time they do.) While their titles and name choices harken to a band trying a bit too hard to sound interesting, Dimensions is a solid demo, and I look forward to whatever the band comes up with next, despite knowing I’ll have to decipher whateverthehell their word choices are trying to say. Christ, I need a Thesaurus.