Whourkr wasn't the only digital-death metal outfit that I just discovered on the awesome French label Dan's Crypt; there's also the astounding jungle/drum n' bass/glitch infested death metal of the bizarrely-named Mulk, a one man band who just debuted with this brand new album. And let me tell you, it was a tough decision as to pick Whourkr over Mulk for our featured release this week. It could easily have gone the other way. This shit is fucking AWESOME, a super complex fusion of chaotic electronica and brutal distorted drum n' bass and the absolute HEAVIEST strains of technical death metal. There's twenty tracks on here, and it's impossible to break them down one by one. Each track averages around a minute and a half, and in that timespan somehow manages to pack in a million different changes, a dizzying blur of rhythmic shifts that run Mulk's skullcrushing downtuned death metal riffs and screaming epic leads through a cuisinart of insanely spastic breakbeats, V/VM-esque cutup, slamming techno beats, BRUTAL jungle/drum n bass, a whole host of hardcore electronica moves and murderous breakcore riddims. What rules about the way that Mulk puts it all together is how heavy the beats/samples are; most of the time when you have bands fusing electronica and/or drum n bass with extreme metal elements, the beats usually aren't as forceful and powerful as the guitar riffs or noise or whatever else is going on. Not with Mulk. The slithery breakcore beats and jungle rhythms and explosion of percussive glitch are fucking devestating, and the whole thing is just brutally heavy. Way heavier than any of Bong-Ra's death metal/jungle mashups, or Avulsion's drum n bass remixes, or even Whourkr for that matter. Where Whourkr is abstract and futuristic sounding and running on a bizarre alien logic with the way that they assemble their detailed glitch/death seizures, Mulk is a slimy meth dealer in the alley, hideous and violent and gacked out of his goddamn mind, wrapping freaked out urban beats deformed beyond comprehension around carnivorous death metal. Nintendo effects are chopped up and stretched out, samples of moody cello and flute show up unexpectedly, Orthrelm-like squiggle shred is splattered across messed up deathgrindjungle, fragments of wrecked hard-drive noise strewn everywhere, and French language film samples guide the listener through Mulk's increasingly messed up arrangements. So fucking awesome! Like Suffocation fused with Shitmat, or Venetian Snares crossed with Deeds Of Flesh. And the vocals are just as fucked and processed. The singer belts out a hilariously deep deathgrunt, but that gets warped and sliced and stretched and mutated into a whole new arsenal of alien growls, stuttering explosions of vomit, and demonic growls converted into a virtual "brown note", with everything flying by at hyperspeed and changing up every ten seconds or so. Highly recommended !!!



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