Blemish - Omnipresence (Album Review)

Stream the song whilst you read!

New Jersey grinding death outfit Blemish released their first full length album on June 5th, and it is something to behold. Over the span of fifteen minutes this band grabs you and refuses for even an instant to let you escape a truly putrid onslaught. Tracks like Nailgun Acupuncture and Like Moths to Shit grind to the bone with their down-tuned brutality, swapping between the heaviest, sludgiest breakdown this side of Sanguisugabogg and the chainsaw-speed of Mortician to conjure up some real evil stuff.

Blemish could have left it there to become one of the most exciting grindcore bands out right now, but slap-bang in the middle of the project is a relentless cover of Slogun's I Just Kill and rips a hole into me every time I listen to it. Waves of thick abrasive noise spliced with howls of "I kill to forget" splits the album in two, leaving you vulnerable for another vicious serving as soon as the guitars come back in. This blend of grindcore and harsh-noise makes me think of the Full of Hell and Merzbow record from a few years back, and I am all for it. It is something special to pull off such a genre switch-up in the middle of your debut album, but Blemish do it and they do it well with Omnipresence.

This record is not for the faint of heart, but it is a new, fresh and endlessly exciting project in the metal space right now and I implore you to give it a shot. Feel the fear, succumb to the pain, and get crushed into oblivion with this beast of an album. Rating: 3.8/5