what a freaking good record! next to obscura's "diluvium" and beyond creation's "algorythm", slugdge's fourth full length is the technical death metal album of 2018. this record hit me right out of the blue, i saw a copy at js thomas tumblr and just thought, it had a cool looking cover art. reminded me a bit of rings of saturn madness. i needed some more time to finally check out a few tunes at the tube. but as soon as i did, slugdge had me at "hello" and now i needed a vinyl copy fast.
problem was that slugdge released this record on willowtip from the states. i wasn't familiar with them but found out that the label concentrated on releasing technical and proggy death metal stuff but had no large distribution over here in europe. that made getting a vinyl copy difficult, plus i was already late to the party. when i stepped to the table, "esoteric malacology" was already in its second pressing.
after some intensive research i found a commercial seller on the amazon market place sending their stuff from switzerland. fortunately all pressings are on coloured vinyl, so there was no risk in getting black vinyl. it also made getting a lesser limited colour-way highly probable, though. i did get the most common colour of the 2nd press but i think it looks nice. clear deep purple out of 250 copies. hillarious song titles like "salt thrower" (britains love their bolt thrower") or "crop killer" (does ice-t ring a bell?) add to the magic this album creates. willowtip records. 2018.
