Washington D.C. has had a storied impact on heavy music in this country, from the hardcore that emerged from the city itself to the doom metal from its outlying regions in Maryland and Virginia. You have to wonder why there aren’t more death metal bands from the area, too—if evil and corruption are your trades, there’s no shortage of inspiration, to say the least. Genocide Pact are a death metal trio from the capital who are out to change that. Their second record, Order of Torment, takes from Bolt Thrower’s bull-headed charge and anti-establishment outlook and Incantation’s death-doom, creating another crushing altar to the early Nineties that also revels in some aspects of the genre missed by less politically-inclined revival bands.
As with a great deal of modern-retro American death metal, Genocide Pact veer towards less complexity and more pummeling. This is in part a result of the band members’ hardcore backgrounds: Guitarist/vocalist Tim Mullaney and bassist Michael Nolan also play in Disciples of Christ, while drummer Connor Donegan bashes in Red Death and has filled for Power Trip live. Bolt Thrower were the most punk-connected of the early death metal bands, and that quality lives on in Torment. Opening track “Conquered and Disposed” moves with a pulverizing efficiency, setting a tone for the album as it finds a common ground between primeval murk and combat-like flexibility.
Genocide Pact’s inclination is to remove some of the cryptic nature of Incantation’s music, leaving behind a time-warping ooze. Torment feels slower than it actually is, submerging you in a slo-mo apocalypse you can only marvel at. Even when the band speeds up, as with Donegan’s blast-beat drumming on “Spawn of Suffering,” they still sound like they’re sloshing through a mile of damning tar. “Pain Reprisal” trudges along like sludge and teases out a melody so pained it’s practically crying against its own existence. Mullaney starts “Ascendency Absolved” with a chugging rhythm that morphs into a Bolt Thrower thrust at half-speed, throwing in a lead riff that hardens into something more torn by battle than exalting it.
If Torment feels like a hellworld encroaching with the heat swelling, that’s also thanks to Mullaney’s lyrical direction. He deals in violence and destruction like many death metal songwriters, but uses those themes to explore deceptive power dynamics, a decision that dates back to when he formed in the band in college. (This lyrical stance is Genocide Pact’s biggest debt to Bolt Thrower, a band that revelled in battle lore as a way of criticizing the nature of power.) “Decimation Grid” puts the costs of war in personal terms: “Victims of a lie, a truth that never was/Pitted against those, who similarly starve/Used by greater fools, who laugh at your pain/Promised a dream, but receiving terror.” “Authoritarian Impulse” is even more blunt, opening with “Paranoid filter/Obscures the horizon/Of oppression and deceit.” Mullaney uses death metal as a way to lift the veil on society. And while his imagery is general enough to apply to many historical eras, it strikes particularly deep now.
Social commentary wasn’t unusual in death metal’s late Eighties/early Nineties heyday: Carcass’ gore lyrics were tied to their animal rights stances, Napalm Death have openly leftist politics, and death-grind band Brutal Truth had songs like “Anti-Homophobe,” the pro-weed “Choice of a New Generation,” and “K.A.P. (Kill All Politicians).” Even with a post-2010 groundswell in the genre, though, there hasn’t been a lot of notable death metal that criticizes power as of late. Torment is a welcome exception, attacking with such force that it makes the bands who don’t tackle these issues feel like the real outliers.
