After an ear-devastating silence – their last album was released in early 2020 – this Flemish combo, Wound Collector, returns with a four-track EP, called Begging For Chicxulub. Original members Peter Verdonck (song-compositions, saxophone [!] and vocals) and Guy Van Campenhout (guitars) entered the studio with fellow musicians Stijn Deldaele (bass), Nico Veroeven (drums) and Mexico-born Poncho Gavall (lead guitars) in order to record this newest piece of mercilessly brain-squeezing and skull-pulverizing madness. All members are experienced musicians, but that’s another story; on the .net-thing you will surely find any additional information you need.
Let’s focus on this piece of love-and-peace, which was actually recorded in 2023, if I am not mis-informed. Begging For Chicxulub (do these guys pray for a new comet to give mankind what happened to the dinos a couple of years, hehe, ago?) lasts for about fifteen minutes (a pity, for this length is way too short; yet then again, I couldn’t stand another depressing hiatus of aural continency) and it sort of continues the mad, rabid, ‘bulldozing’ (stolen from the bio, I admit) and frenzy past. That means: grinding and devastating Blast Death Metal (with that fine-tuned Belgian finesse; let’s be honest) with intelligent lyrics and – above all – the multiple use of saxophone. Okay; the use of instruments like the sax is not that totally world-shocking anymore, yet still, one must clearly differentiate the sporadic, accidental, one-time use of such instruments, versus certain recordings that have this instrument in a ‘full membership’ – which goes for Wound Collector, as you might know (or not [yet]).
So, after a four-year hiatus, Begging For Chicxulub offers us, the innocent audience, another avalanche of aural bruteness with a refined execution. River Of Scalded Corpses, Progress Through Dishonor, Dehumanized By The Auburn System and Chicxulub stand for fast, technical and modernistic Death Metal with an old-schooled vibe, a hint of Grindcore-laden nastiness, and that approach of Jazz-oriented madness. The use of the saxophone is quite diverse, and does appear very regularly. Sometimes it is like a John Zorn delirium, deconstructive, discordant and frenzy, then again it’s rather avant-gardist and progressive in use, or even ‘melodious’ as in ‘harmonic’ (yeah, sort of, whatever). It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, I’m sure, yet the open-minded lunatics amongst us might dig it…
Honesty, however, compels me to say this: the saxophone is a characteristic instrument to define Wound Collector’s, eh, let’s call it ‘Music’, but this band is more than that sax alone, evidently. All other instruments, as well as the heavenly choirs (what?), are part of the game too, evidently. When it comes to those sweet chants: gruesome screams and barbaric growls sermonize messages of war, destruction and other not-that-beautiful characteristics of the human kind. The fine interaction in between the grunts and the screams is well-balanced, and of course it does fit to this specific niche of Extreme Metal. Supported by blasting drum-eruptions and down-tuned rhythm strings, the lead guitar parts get performed with fast yet onward-thinking techniques. Once in a while, Cryptopsy, Imperial Triumphant, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Suffocation or Gorguts do come to mind (amongst others, evidently). The four rather short compositions (all of them lasting in between three and four minutes) come with a certain dissonant, anti-constructive texture, with inclusion of several sometimes predictable and sometimes unforeseen and mind-blowing breaks and changes in structure and tempo (yet beware: that tempo balances in between lightning-fast and even lightning-faster; don’t expect peace or tranquility).
Despite the furious and maniacal execution, the whole sounds impressively well-organized, like apocalypse and chaos defined in terms of designed schemes. It works, it really does!
Independently released digitally and on compact-disc (I think…), with ominous artwork (there comes the comet once more), heavily supported by the Hard Life Promotion team…
https://woundcollector.bandcamp.com/album/begging-for-chicxulub
https://www.concreteweb.be/reviews/various-artists-sounds-hell-series-volume-1
https://www.facebook.com/hardlifepromotion/about