Vulvodynia – Praenuntius Infiniti | Album Review

Swallowing the universe one planet at a time.

South Africa’s greatest death metal export Vulvodynia have been trolling the deathcore and death metal world relentlessly recently by unleashing Praenuntius Infiniti’s cover star Bob The Butcher. Bob has run amok across album covers everywhere with his portal gun, creating a highly entertaining social media storm where no comments section is safe. He even had a brief fling with Resident Evil’s Lady Dimitrescu and teaming up with Wayland, the cult leader adorning Aborted’s ManiaCult album. Grotesque characters aside, Vulvodynia have created a pus bustlingly brutal album, so keep all your exterior abscesses safe, otherwise you’ll have some serious cleaning up to do.  

Bringing in some signature Vulvodynia elements and mixing it up with some new genres, such as melodeath and technical death metal, the band’s sound has been pushed into new realms of the extreme. This continued maturation of the more technical elements of their sound set to the back drop of their already established slamming death metal pedigree, Praenuntius Infiniti ushers in a new age for the band. The album concept continues where 2015’s Finis Omnium Ignorantiam left off, where the world has been swallowed by the great god creature that is ‘Praenuntius’. Now the multiverse battles for survival inside this great god monster, as ‘Praenuntius’ consume all in the ‘Eternal Wasteland Of Galaxies’. Opening up with a contextual intro that sounds like it is being read by Morgoth from the Lord Of The Rings, you have two minutes to brace yourself for the ensuing chaos as the slow build up creates an indescribable tension. Launching into ‘The Shadowy Descent Of Gaia’ it is clear for all to see that Vulvodynia are not here to mess around.

It is instructing to think of conceptual slamming death metal records, but given the added mix of genres involved as well, Vulvodynia pull it off spectacularly. Bringing this intense and extreme darkness to a complex sci-fi concept is refreshing. Whilst conceptually, galactic destruction is nothing new, Vulvodynia’s approach, belief and conviction in their story makes the album stand out amongst its contemporaries in the genre. This is demonstrated best on ‘Praenuntius Ascends’, there is a real sense of impending doom and foreboding fear. The vocal effects sound as if there is an alien trying to communicate with you through the album, and this is a trend which continues through out the album as the more electronic effects feel more like transmissions of our feeble cries for help as we are stuck inside ‘Praenuntius’. 

The album also features some heavy duty guest vocalists from across the genre’s sacred halls of pestilence. Oliver Rae Aleron (Archspire) and Malcolm Pugh (Inferi) make their presence felt on the incredibly technical vocal track ‘Banquet of Enigmatic Horrors Pt 2: Agony’ with the latter also featuring on ‘Banquet of Enigmatic Horrors Pt 1: Terror’, whilst Jon Huber (Bludgeoned) and Matti Way ply their trade on ‘Praenuntius Ascends’. They feature alongside other heavyweight vocalist; Disentomb’s Jawd James on ‘Forging The Deity Crusher’ and Viscera’s Jamie Graham on ‘The War Within’. This star studded, highly technical, slamming death metal album is one for the ages, Vulvodynia have gone the extra mile to make their debut release on Unique Leader Records a special one. It has to be applauded at how the band managed to get this many people on one album.

Praenuntius Infiniti is a significant step up from a band that was already starting to push  the boundaries of what slamming death metal could be. It also isn’t very common that you get a record that sounds like this to be so conceptually rich and immerses you in the end of the world, galaxy and universe. A vicious and grotesque effort from South Africa’s premium death metal export.