Earlier this year Deafheaven released Sunbather, arguably one of the most beautiful heavy metal albums ever recorded. Vasaeleth just barfed all over it. All Uproarious Darkness is a fist in the face of music. It's a wet fart at the heavy metal dinner table. This is primal death metal for people who prefer relentless brutality to studied precision.
All Uproarious Darkness should be a divisive album; maybe not for heavy metal writers, who are largely interested in proclaiming every new release "epic" or "face-melting" to stay in the good graces of PR firms and record labels that provide free promo albums. But, certainly, fans of extreme music will find this album either exciting or infuriating.
The first thing to keep in mind is that All Uproarious Darkness is only twenty minutes long. If you're looking for an album to put on and lose yourself in for an hour, this isn't it. Thanks to the muddy production, it's hard to distinguish one song from the next, and initially your ears could be tricked into thinking the album is longer than it actually is. But it's still so short that, by the third consecutive listen, you start to recognize individual tracks. The length isn't necessarily a detriment though. The songs on this album are so chaotic and ferocious that a longer run time might get tedious. And it's not like you people have never heard a twenty minute punk or grindcore album before.
Aside from the brief run time, the production quality of All Uproarious Darkness may be an issue for some people as well. It seems like Vasaeleth went out of their way to craft a putrid sounding record. The guitar and bass are so sludgy that individual chords and notes are almost indistinguishable, the vocals consist of incoherent shrieking and growling, and the drums sound like a caveman beating on a wet cardboard box.
Speaking of the drumming, there are multiple instances throughout the album when Antinom, the drummer, seems to have trouble keeping time with the tempo of the music. From the opening track, "All Uproarious Darkness", it sounds like Antinom is already frantically playing for dear life. There are even times when he seems to get so overwhelmed that he stops playing for a fraction of a second to sync back up with the song. Regardless of the reason behind this sloppiness, it only adds to the overall feeling that Vasaelath really don't care about much besides raw savagery.
It should be obvious by now that this isn't an album for people who appreciate the polished musicianship of technical death metal or the vanilla mediocrity of bands like Lamb of God. Sure, you can't tell the difference between "Paradise Reconsecrated" and "Black Curse Upheld," but that's not why you listen to music like this. This is an album for people who want to hear an aural representation of Lovecraftian monstrosities eviscerating people and devouring their entrails. All Uproarious Darkness is all id. It's reckless, frenetic, sloppy noise created with no consideration for the enjoyment of its audience.
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