Alone in the Grave, the latest recording from the young Olympia, Wash., death metal band Bone Sickness, clocks in at 18 minutes, which seems short even when you take into account that it's the longest Bone Sickness release to date. Their label refers to it as their "debut 12"," but falls short of calling it an LP. (Are they considering it a full-length, like the hyper-stimulated grindcore band Gridlink did with their 12-minute classics Orphan and Amber Grey?) The EP vs. LP distinction is not so much about length as it is intention: EPs are about transitions and treading water, LPs are definitive statements of where a band creatively stands at that moment. In that sense, regardless of where they file it in their discography, Grave certainly sees Bone Sickness distinguishing themselves strongly in the crowded death metal landscape.
A common thread in this sort of NWOSDM-- New Wave of Old School Death Metal-- is a rejection of technicality, pretension, gloss, drum triggers, oversized backprints, and needless complexity. It's more punk, though this unfortunately often just means unoriginality minus technical skill, which is even worse because Incantation's cavernous murk is a lot easier to emulate than Gorguts' atonal slashing rhythms. Bone Sickness, though, know their history and how to build on it. They may take quite a bit from classic Calif., death metal crusts Autopsy, but they've got the energy to distinguish themselves that many more lethargic acts simply don't possess-- they're not nearly as doomy as Autopsy, emphasizing velocity above all.
Bone Sickness hardly stop for a groove break, but leave an impression that lasts much longer than the album's run time. Grave's punky air is in part responsible for its diminutive length-- and those 18 minutes are frantic, as if they had to play under some severe duress, not just because it's all the material they wrote.
Even the cover art, done by Hand of Beaver, known for his work with Chips and Beer magazine, strikes a balance between death metal tradition and modern abstraction. Most covers have recognizable terrors like decomposing bodies or medical mishaps; this one is a hallucinatory nightmare fueled by Disma, Blue Dream, and a Xerox machine. There appear to be webs, graves, tree roots, but who knows what is going on? (Alone In the Grave, indeed, tripping your balls off.)
Their Pacific Northwest home is better known for birthing firmaments like Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, and K Records than death metal. My first exposure to them was at Chaos in Tejas in 2011, where they played with Acephalix, a death metal group with origins in crust punk. The band notes powerviolence bands Crossed Out and Despise You as influences, but more telling is their mention of Repulsion. The Flint, MI grindcore pioneers made a racket that was too metal for the punks, but too fast and raw for most metalheads. While Bone Sickness don't have Scott Carlson's gnarly bass tone, they more fully realize the link between death metal and punk. Unlike Repulsion in their first incarnation, they might-- and deserve to-- find an audience who also understands the connection.
