Gorguts – Colored Sands (Season of Mist)

Gorguts – Colored Sands (Season of Mist)

Gorguts - Colored Sands

“Gorguts” was a terrible name when Luc Lemay chose it for his band in 1989, and nearly a quarter-century later, it’s demonstrably worse. It’s not just that it’s a goofy-ass, not-even-clever portmanteau/pun that brings to mind the very basest proclivities of death metal’s Fangoria fringe. It’s that — unlike, say, Cannibal Corpse or Autopsy (both better names than Gorguts, mind you) — Gorguts don’t even sort of cater to that fringe. They never really have, but in 2013, that name may as well qualify as false advertising. Colored Sands is the first Gorguts LP since 2001, their first since the suicide of drummer Steve McDonald in 2002, their first since Lemay reformed the band in 2008 with Dysrhythmia members Kevin Hufnagel and Colin Marston (the latter also of Krallice) on guitar and bass, respectively, and John Longstreth (Dim Mak, Origin) on drums. But don’t call it a comeback — call it a triumph. Honestly, even that feels like an understatement: Colored Sands is about as technically ambitious as metal gets, bringing together polyphonic, avant-grade insanity with rich strains of unexpected melody — all of it, alternately, in sky-blackening clouds of armor-piercing carbide shells and/or dreamlike expanses of spacious zen stillness. The Conservatory-trained Lemay is Gorguts’ chief composer, but his own vision allows for those of his bandmates to shine through, too: Much of Colored Sands feels like workshopped versions of the jazzy/proggy/math-y wizardry produced by Dysrhythmia or Krallice. But Lemay’s strong compositional gifts provide structure for his occasionally structure-averse co-workers, so that the astonishing instrumental mastery here services the songs, rather than the reverse. Colored Sands is especially notable for all its frankly beautiful cutaways and digressions, not least of which being the classical-style piece “The Battle Of Chamdo,” which Lemay wrote on piano for a string quartet. I assume “Gorguts” mashes up the words “gore” and “guts” to offer a new word that sort of sounds like — but is the diametric opposite of — “gorgeous.” But for Colored Sands, “gorgeous” would have been a whole lot closer to the truth. –Michael [LISTEN]