Vulgar Mephitis From Dust Review
Vulgar Mephitis
From Dust
Willowtip Records
2026
Pittsburgh isn't just home to Primanti Bros and the Steelers/Pirates/Penguins. For decades, it's had a thriving underground music scene from punk to metal to rock n’ roll and all points in between. In my humble opinion, they also have one of the best independent music venues in the country in Preserving Underground (just outside Steel City in New Kensington, PA). In that vein, we bring you brutal death metal quartet Vulgar Mephitis (a mammal from the skunk family) and their first full-length album, From Dust.
The band (Dan Martin-guitars, bass - Jay Schweinberg, drums - Nick Bentzel and vocals - Jacob Toy) have been doing their thing since 2022's self-titled debut EP but wanted to change their delivery up once Martin and Schweinberg entered the fold. Going from a more straightforward approach to more varied tempos, disorienting and angular riffs and compositions that are much more varied have benefited them tenfold.
For starters, the mix (iMixed / Mastered by Sasha Borovykh at Tsun Tsun Productions) is crystalline and modern but thankfully, devoid of any cold quantization and compression. The sounds here are all evened out perfectly and everyone has space to breathe on their respective instruments, that sound more organic and live than sampled, snapped to a grid or digitally amp modelled to oblivion. Whether true or not, that's for the band to say. If I am wrong though, I can't tell. That's a good thing.
Vulgar Mephitis crank out 8 tunes here in just over 25 minutes, with each song averaging two and a half to three or four plus minutes, save for the final cut “Wounds”, which is just over five.
Brutal death metal, especially the modern kind, is unfortunately full of tropes. However, Vulgar Mephitis avoid most of them. You'll have your ultra guttural vocals, that sometimes bree bree (“Martyr”). You also have your pinch harmonic happy chugging riffing (“Exterminating Profane”), insanely fast and technical drumming and pulsing fleet-fingered bass (“Peer Into the Abyss”). That's all standard issue for the genre, right? But that's not all. VM set themselves apart by randomly dropping open dissonant strings and triad chords wherever the hell they please. Between the down-tuned chromatic churn and the endlessly shifting tempos and drumming changeups, they're uniquely, almost, jarring but never done to be nonsensical or weird for the sheer sake of it. The best example is the morose and eerie keyboard-backed outro of "Scorn of My Flesh.” Another highlight is the album closer “Wounds”. This one manages to be the fastest/blast beat forward heaviest song here but also differentiates itself with utterly crushing mid-tempo double-kick sections and a melancholic outro with a sample of operatic vocals accompanied by delay effects and slight keyboard backing. It's interesting to me, that after all the carnage they dole out, they chose to end the record like this. Perhaps it's to accentuate the song itself and provide respite from any lyrically metaphorical wounds they just spent the better part of four minutes strangling and pummeling with blunt force. Whatever the case, that's my vote for the best track when all is said and done.
Vulgar Mephitis are relatively young in the game, but they are already miles ahead many bands of this ilk. Why? I'm glad you asked. Simply because they don't have a linear (and thankfully, a non-misogynistic or gross-out lyrical approach) approach to their songwriting and they twist it and bend it until it writhes and undulates like a serpent creeping up on its prey. You never see it coming, and before you know it, an album like From Dust has suffocated you with its razor-sharp precision and venomous intent….
RIYL- Gorgasm, Defeated Sanity, Dying Fetus, Lust of Decay, Gorguts
~TB