Review: Malignancy – …Discontinued

Style: brutal death metal, technical death metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Defeated Sanity, Suffocation, Cryptopsy, Nile, Atheist
Country: United States-NY
Release date: 14 June 2024

I live in a very high cost-of-living area, so eating out isn’t cheap. Accordingly, my friends and I love going out to this cafeteria-style udon place where we can get a huge bowl of udon for merely $10; it’s cheap, satisfying, and delicious. And you know why? It’s because of those big ass noodles—thick ones. Malignancy, like Marugame Udon, deal in chunky noodles: they play brutal technical death metal with one of the strongest collections of riffs 2024 has seen (rivaled only by Replicant). So buckle up, because the slurping’s gonna get messy.

First and foremost, Jacob Schmidt’s (Defeated Sanity) bass performance is ungodly and makes me feel profane bodily sensations. The guy uses oodles and oodles of tasty noodles, spidering his way up and down scales as a wicked counterpoint to the guitars, and the producer Lasse Lammert clearly loves the muscular stumps of a bassman, pushing Schmidt to the front of the mix in order for him to seduce me. His influence on Malignant is clear with the band sounding like an even more technical Defeated Sanity, and Schmidt perfectly complements Alex Weber (Exist) in the band. Alongside them, guitarist Ron Kachnic shreds all over with a never-ending onslaught of riffs. I lasted less than thirty seconds into note-taking of …Discontinued before writing that I wanted to smash my head straight through a brick wall; the album makes you feel invincible yet beaten to a pulp at the same time. I guarantee you that in the time it took you to read this sentence, Malignancy played at least three riffs no matter where you are in the album.

Last week I reviewed Replacire who had some groovy-ass, heavy tech death, but their grooves were intricate little pitter patters of chugs, flurries of explosive drums in knotted staccatos. Malignancy, on the other hand, take your skull, use a jackhammer on it, and then squeeze the remaining juices out of it to drink from your shattered cranium. There is no subtlety here; everything is gloriously as it seems. Technical, in your face, heavy, loud. Moreover, Malignancy’s remarkably smooth transitions between riffs displays songwriting as tight as their performances, and Mike Heller’s drumming is what ties the songs together. Remarkable in both speed and seemingly possessing six limbs, he blasts at light speed yet somehow keeps enough control to seriously vary up the style, fitting every riff with laser-precision. At points, he even overshadows the stellar performances of Schmidt and Kachnic with his cyborg drumming, the fills like at :25 into “Irradiated Miscreation” or 3:30 into “Oppositional Defiance” exceeding my brain’s processing speed. 

…Discontinued is a little unhinged (in a good way, of course), too. At points, the guitars feel unwieldy despite the effortless skill of Kachnich, playing with the reckless abandon of early tech death’s thrashiness—with riffs like the opening of “Oppositional Defiance” sounding almost like Atheist. Unlike Lord Worm (Cryptopsy), Danny Nelson’s vocal performance is a tad too legible for the style, and while his lows are utterly beastly, I think more variance with some shrieks would add more character to the performance, though he’s excellent at sounding like a vacuum cleaner (see the end of “Irradiated Miscreation”), and he does a damn good garbage disposal, too. 

I see few faults with …Discontinued; it’s about as refined a brutal tech death experience as one can have. Occasionally it’s cliche—I have no love for cheesy/edgy spoken word samples (“Ancillary Biorhythms”), and every single track except for “Purity of Purpose” being titled a variation of “Adjective Noun” is hilarious. Additionally, the genre as a whole is a massively crowded space (I mean just look at the FFO and YMAL), but every individual element here is performed with the highest degree of meticulousness. It’s imperfect if only because it doesn’t have the identity of Nile, the influence of Suffocation, the true insanity of early Cryptopsy, or the sick extra influences of something like the jazz fusion of Atheist, but as a honed-in riff machine, Malignancy are peers of any act. If Malignancy were to change one thing, though, I would absolutely love some killer guitar solos; …Discontinued feels a little devoid on that front when they could melt my face even further. If you like your metal to be heavy, you’d be doing a disservice not to add this to your library immediately.

Recommended tracks: Irradiated Miscreation, Oppositional Defiance
You may also like: Brodequin, Replacire, Anal Stabwound, Brain Drill, Serocs, Hideous Divinity, Wormed
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Willowtip Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Malignancy is:
– Jacob Schmidt (bass)
– Danny Nelson (vocals)
– Ron Kachnic (guitars)
– Mike Heller (drums)