Band: Pseudogod
Album: Deathwomb Catechesis
Release Date: 24 April 2012
Record Label: KVLT
Performing at Maryland Deathfest XII: 3:40pm Sunday at Edison Lot B
Here’s our second album review in our series highlighting some of the less famous, but must see, bands at Maryland Deathfest XII. These reviews feature more background about the bands than our normal album reviews and hopefully they’ll convince you to check these less known acts out at this year’s Deathfest. So read about Pseudogod, the final band added to the Maryland Deathfest XII line up (besides fill-in bands replacing cancellations) and be sure to stream their tracks at the end of the post to hear them for yourself.
The 2014 edition of Maryland Deathfest has no shortage of rare appearances by obscure metal bands from around the world. One of the more exotic bands this year is Pseudogod, a blackened death metal band from Russia. Unlike some of the (relatively) more famous Russian metal bands, such as Arkona and Korrozia Metalla, they don’t originate in the large city of Moscow. Pseudogod’s home is over 700 miles east in a city known as Perm located at the feet of the Ural Mountains. You may never get another chance in your lifetime to see a band from this region. So are they actually worth seeing at Maryland Deathfest? To put it bluntly, I think you’d be a fool to miss them if you’re going to be at Deathfest on Sunday.
Pseudogod was formed in 2004 but they had only released a demo and several splits until their only full length album, Deathwomb Catechesis, was released in 2012. The songs on Deathwomb Catechesis are punishing and exploding with riffs that will surely get the mosh pits at Deathfest moving. The band’s sound is a mix of black and death metal which makes some sense because half of their members come from a raw black metal band named Groth and the others from a brutal death metal band called Act Of God. Pseudogod’s guitar tone is certainly more black metal but the pummeling percussive aggression comes from death metal. The songs are almost relentless in their delivery of blast beats but several songs do have moments where they turn down the intensity and they show their range with slower, simple riffs that keep the setting dark but let you catch your breath. They make the most of these lulls by drawing you in with catchy rhythms only to have you jarred back into submission when the beating suddenly starts again.
The vocals throughout the album are coarse and guttural with thick reverb added to them in studio to make vocalist I.S.K.H.’s voice sound distant and haunting. Lyrically the songs are fairly standard Satanic fare focusing more on the mystical side of things such as prayers for “Malignant spears/To the womb of god!” The lyrics are primarily in English though one song on the album, “Encarnación del mal,” is written entirely in Spanish. You probably wouldn’t even notice this at first because of the growled vocals.
Pseudogod used to wear corpse paint during live performances but they seem to have stopped doing that at some point it appears, however they still wear upside down crosses and lots of leather on stage. Most of the live footage I’ve seen of them is at smaller bars and club venues, their performance at Maryland Deathfest might be one of the biggest stages they’ve ever played on. They go on fairly early Sunday, at 3:40pm on the Edison Lot’s outdoor stage B, but you should make time to catch them because you really don’t want to miss this rare chance to see them perform live.
Azazel:
Encarnación del mal:
The Seraphim Of Ultimate Void (live):
