The mangled, agonizing brand of doom metal of Disjecta Membrae is described as "grotesque vomitive doom" by the French duo, a reference to the bizarre vocal approach that the band uses to create their uniquely demented sound. Demented only scratches the surface, really; this shit is FILTHY, reeking with hellish atmosphere, and as the liner notes state, the music strives to create an "audio manifestation of Medieval Hell, Agony, Torture, Pain and Hate". It's a project from Asmael LeBouc, who you might know from the French doom band Funeralium; as the main member of Disjecta Membrae, LeBouc plays all of the instruments and handles a portion of the vocals, with some additional vocal contributions from someone named "Jumblehole". Uh, right.

LeBouc's style of hellish blackened doom reminds me a lot of Abruptum; all of the vocals are nonverbal noises, no lyrics, just twisted screams and howling, and the liner notes that come with the disc go into some detail about the band's deliberate avoidance of lyrics. The whole point behind this band is to create a warped nightmare atmosphere, and they do this enthusiastically as they stagger through this single epic track. The nearly twenty-minute "Taedium Vitae" starts off with weird grunting noises, hissing vokills, the screams of the tortured and damned echoing off in the distance, surrounded by the clanking of chains, weird low-end squelchy noises and other chaotic elements, creating a very Abruptum-esque ambience in the first few moments. The music quickly erupts into a massive hellish doom trudge, though, with the vomitous vocals kicking in fully, the garbled screams and moans and bestial grunting all layered on top of one another, a nightmarish din of retching and vomiting and groaning over a massive simple two-chord doom metal riff that repeats over heavy plodding drums, the slobbering, mewling, wheezing, animalistic grunts and howls getting more and more crazed and inhuman, not really sounding like voices at all, but more like the insane wailing of subhuman beasts out of a nightmare.

As the track evolves, strange atonal guitar noises emerge in the cracks between the lumbering doom riffing, the song eventually morphing into a jagged, off time dirge for a few minutes, almost Godflesh like, and throughout the track, the sounds of clanking chains and other noises reemerge, adding to the already sickly, dreadful atmosphere. Then, in the last few minutes, the grueling chaotic doomdirge breaks down into a heaving mass of chaotic drumming, low-end drone and squealing amp noise that collapses into a slab of blackened industrial drift, an eerie melody spinning out across a vast field of grinding machine rumble, metallic shimmer, throbbing engines, very dark and Lustmordian as the track winds down to a close. This sounds fucking insane.

Musically, this is some bleak, evil-sounding stuff, but it's the vocals that really make Disjecta Membrae so interesting, the litany of multiple voices all appearing at once, making this sound like some industrial doomdeath jam being performed in a mental ward, or maybe Blut Aus Nord gone deathdoom and fronted by a gang of slavering orcs. Fans of both Skitliv and Abruptum, check this out! The disc came out on the excellent Spanish label Black Mass in a limited edition of 500 copies.