Pharmacist – “Propelling Inwards”

Hells Headbangers

The underground death metal boom continues to deliver some of the most vile, brutal music from all across the globe, and I love discovering what bands from other continents and time zones can do with the genre. Enter Pharmacist from Japan, who have been making uncompromisingly filthy extreme metal since 2020. On their debut album, Medical Renditions Of Grinding Decomposition, Pharmacist take the foundational goregrind established by heavyweights like Autopsy, Carcass, and Haemorrhage, and drag it to its ugliest depths. The band hasn’t released any music since 2022, but now they’re back with their third album, Vertebrae After Vertebrae, releasing on May 29th via iconic label and distro Hells Headbangers.

Lead single and album opener “Propelling Inwards” is our first visceral taste, holding back nothing from the moment the band kicks into their high-volume, high-octane, and high-compression performance with their trademark, layered, guttural growls. It’s an immediately intense first verse, switching back and forth between circle pit riffs and blast beats, recalling contemporaries like FesterDecay, Nuclear Remains, and Pissgrave. The middle section hits a menacing 7/4 groove before grinding back into another verse, and the song’s final 80 seconds are rooted in a headbanger’s dream rhythm guitar repetition, chugging along while the drums change sequences every four bars underneath.

“Propelling Inwards” is a strong signal that Vertebrae After Vertebrae should be one of the year’s best underground death albums, and a welcome return from a scene favorite band. Pharmacist’s approach to the style is fully their own, when sometimes it’s hard to distinguish one pummeling death metal band from another pummeling death metal band (even though I tend to like most of them anyway). Japan has a long history of approaching traditionally Western genres with more intensity and unusualness than our stateside acts, and Pharmacist is no exception.