Hailing from Utah, one-man blackened death grind entity EGREGORE might be one of the best-kept secrets in the American extreme underground. Sole mastermind M.A.E. (who writes, plays, and records all the music in the band) has created an obfuscating and highly devastating strain of dark grindcore fused with pummeling death metal and slight striations of black metal that stands out as an absolutely unrelenting and incinerating vessel for sonic bedlam.
Since earlier this year M.A.E. has been steadily releasing short digital-only demos, singles, and self-released tapes on the Egregore Bandcamp, a string of releases that have slowly revealed the intensity and uncompromising ferocity of his project, with every new track published showing a marked improvement over its predecessor and an increasingly wretched and devastating vision shaping. Sentient Ruin has now stepped in to consolidate all these scattered tracks on “Thought Form”, a single tape and digital release assembled to showcase all of the band’s material released so far in a compilation format that can be absorbed all in one blow. The result is mesmerizing, and along with the previously published material, the compilation features two brand new yet unreleased tracks (again, standing out as marked improvement over everything else) as well as new artwork and a more accomplished and complete feel and format to immerse oneself into the maelstrom and absorb the band’s music in a bigger breath.
Starting from the obvious and very well expressed foundation influences of the holy trinity of grind (Napalm Death, Carcass, Bolt Thrower), M.A.E. has built on top a blinding, unpredictable, and imposing framework of absolutely pulverizing aural chaos, introducing more elements to the mix to create something transformative and truly devastating. From the malignancy of certain old black metal to the weight and crushing intensity of darker death metal bastions like Convulse and Immolation, all the way to more extreme and deviant thresholds of war metal, Egregore presents itself as a dark and churning maelstrom of influences, an unpredictable, tense, and highly unstable critical mass that sounds like it’s about to implode any second and disintegrate anything standing in its path. Grab “Thought Form” cassettes from Sentient Ruin and digital downloads from the band, and stay tuned for the more that’s gonna come…
