Piss Vortex: Self-titled

I slept on Piss Vortex’s debut self-titled full-length for some time before deciding to descend into its heavy din to ferret out and detail the findings. To be honest, however, after emerging, I could only express a series of oh!’s and ah!’s and ugh!’s in the wake of the album’s strange and angular aural bends that seem to pull on the gut and sink you in.

Piss Vortex is a Danish quartet that has amassed an amalgamate sound of Grindcore and Progressive Metal with whiffs of Burnt by the Sun-style tough-guy Hardcore breakdowns contained within the crux of their cascading crescendos and declivities.

And on their debut full-length, Piss Vortex, the band simply handles you—they rough and cut you up, and then grind and groove against you, only to blow back a strap of tunes that snarl and gnash, driven by engaging, challenging, and damn near indoctrinating songwriting.

Piss Vortex opens with a 60-second diatribe wherein the decidedly abrasive tone and tenor of the band’s musicality arises as a syncopated metallic haul of shapes and textures better intuited than articulated.

“Devouring Intent” grooves with a sneer—the tune revels in its changeability and gives way to breathless absolution on the following track, “Inoperable,” which is appropriately nearly impossible to compartmentalize and unpack: the quixotic arrangement of its musical components reveals Piss Vortex’s penchant for bravely exploring every aural possibility, leaving no space squandered, no corner unturned.

“Beaten Womb” harrowingly draws a chilling resonance tempered by a kind of searing sensuality, a cold, callous groove, which is the back drop of Piss Vortex’s industry; the song is kneed in by a treacherous, high-throat vocal tear at track’s end.

“Organic Shrapnel” prattles with a Cattle Decap-style spit-grind outfitted in uncouth grit and Sludge, which gives the tune an insouciant cool. A tinny swing of guitar riffs assails and apprehends, as Piss Vortex’s unhampered dissonance captures the band’s signature grit-teeth groove.

Harrowing harmonics on “Of Bodily Waste and Desire” unglue and resonate before the band hauls in an aggressive writhe of syncopation, d-beat, and a couple of cymbal crashes that knock-lay you out.

Twenty-eight seconds of “Filth” efficiently splay a nasty sting of slap-you-back politics, and any further discussion is laid to rest on “Shit Life” and “Those Who Labor,” where in Piss Vortex’s place as one of the most intriguing, promising, and uncompromising bands to emerge on the scene is established.

The album concludes with “Our Maker’s Invisible Hand,” which initially breathes in amicable space, only to turn in a series of Blackened Death Metal moments, which inexhaustibly sweats through to album’s end.

Piss Vortex is a harrowing exploration where the limitlessness of song writing is showcased in unpredictable, inspired, breath-catching moments: the album’s ambitious pursuit is truant, and a visceral and undeniably engaging experience.

Piss Vortex was released on Indisciplinarian Records and can be heard and purchased through the label Website at www.Indisciplinarian.com, as well as through the Indisciplinarian Bandcamp.com Website page at Indisciplinarian.BandCamp.com.

More information on Piss Vortex can be found on the band’s official Facebook page at Facebook.com/PissVortex.