Metalcatto
Another Willowtip album? Are we getting bribed? Unfortunately, that’s not the case yet. We just think that when a Brutal and Tech Death Metal band like Vulgar Mephitis drops an album named From Dust, we need to pay a lot of attention. This hasn’t been the best year for ultra-extreme bands so far, but not all hope is lost. We can still hope to get our faces properly melted again. Yay.
It’s kind of impossible not to compare From Dust to basically late Defeated Sanity. It’s unapologetic, nasty, and gross—all qualities that you covet in your Brutal Death. The precision is enough to make anyone learning how to play an instrument cry, because they’ll never reach this level of course, unless they have no life. Anyway, there’s a je ne sais quoi here that makes everything less numbing than it should be. The riffs are dense, the drumming is inhuman, and the whole thing feels like being caught in a mechanical thresher. Yet it never becomes monotonous.
Perhaps it’s the production that’s cleaner than usual for this kind of beatdown, or the mind-bending tempo changes, but From Dust feels more cerebral than most bands this heavy. It has a layer of pain and drama instead of just senseless violence. But don’t get sad—it’s still mostly just blood and gore. The band knows how to balance technicality with sheer brutality, and that’s a rare skill in this oversaturated niche.
Okay, but all this dread has to come with a negative part, right? I really want to love From Dust, but what’s keeping me a bit on the fence is how the songwriting feels a bit restrained. As in, these guys have even more potential to make things either weirder or proggier, but they’ve decided to stay in the relentless side of things. That’s not bad, but if we had gotten more of what the band shows in the last minute of the whole album, I’d be comparing the work with Emperor or something equally ambitious. As it stands, the album plays it slightly safer than it could have.
Still, Vulgar Mephitis is a band to keep in mind when talking about Brutal Death Metal that actually delivers. It’s loyal to the style, but tries to elevate the craft. I might be left wanting even more madness, but if you’ve never heard of these guys, maybe this is the album to change that. It’s a solid statement from a band that knows exactly what it wants to do. And in a genre full of copycats, that counts for something. So if you’re in the mood for precision violence with a touch of class, From Dust will serve you well. Just don’t expect it to hold your hand. It doesn’t do that. It doesn’t even know what hands are.
Label: Willowtip Records
Release date: September 11th, 2026
Website: https://vulgarmephitis.bandcamp.com/album/from-dust
Country: USA
Score: 3.5/5.0
Metal Eclipse Reviews 