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Question for you: how many bands is Devin Swank going to start? The guy’s already leading the charge with Sanguisugabogg, but that hasn’t stopped him from showing up pretty much everywhere else. In the past few years alone, he’s joined Earthburner, Dripping, Tomb Sentinel, Dyskinesia, and Skag. So really, what’s one more band at this point?

In 2024, Swank teamed up with Immortal Torment guitarist Brandon Studebaker to launch yet another sonic wrecking crew called Bludgeoned by Deformity. The mission for the band was pretty simple – to pay homage to the murky, crushing sound of the mid-’90s and early 2000s East Coast death metal scene. Think along the lines of Pyrexia, Internal Bleeding, Eternal Suffering, and Scattered Remnants — bands that valued groove and grime as much as they did speed and brutality.

To bring this brutality to life, Swank and Studebaker recruited some pretty heavy hitters in the metal scene. They’ve got Adam Jarvis on drums from Pig Destroyer and Misery Index, and like 400 other bands; bassist Ethan Buttery from Sinister Feeling and Jive Bomb; and guitarist Andre Pickens from Tsuris. And now, roughly one year after their formation, we’ve got their debut EP, Epoch of Immorality. And spoiler alert – it rules.

So let’s get into why. If you’re into that East Coast death metal sound of yesteryear, Epoch of Immorality is going to feel like a long-lost cousin — but one that’s been training for the past decade and has become a hulking mass of just muscle and seething anger. It’s familiar, but it doesn’t rest on the laurels of what came before it. There’s real songwriting here, real chemistry, real passion, and it’s got that raw, organic feel that you only get when a band steps into the studio totally ready, instead of relying on digital patchwork to kind of pull it all together. This EP breathes. This EP feels real. This really feels like a bunch of musicians got into a studio and actually made something.

Epoch of Immorality kicks off with “Invocation of Suffering”, which eases you into the manic violence that is the EP in the same way that getting stabbed eases you into getting, like, stabbed more. It’s an entry point, but it’s a weird way to look at the situation. What’s really interesting here is how the track gives the spotlight to the vocals and drums above all. Swank and Jarvis totally dominate here, with the guitars and bass acting more like the machinery that powers their violence. It’s a unique balance, like the vocals and drums are the blades, and the strings are the instruments that are just keeping them sharp.

Then at about one minute and 15 seconds, everything just totally falls apart. You get this wall of feedback and this chaotic sound collage featuring a preacher screaming about Jesus, glitched-out demonic laughter, a warped hymnal playing somewhere in the background, and what sounds like dripping water or blood. I’m really hoping it’s water. It’s kind of hard to tell, honestly. But it’s unnerving. It’s cinematic. And it’s the perfect cap to the final lyrics of the song, which are: “God will bring you to hate yourself. Suffering and pain is all I ask for in prayer.”

Then you’re onto track two, “Immorality”, which kicks off with that unmistakable snare count-in — which is basically death metal’s version of a warning shot. This one leans into more of a traditional death metal structure, but Bludgeoned by Deformity keeps it fresh with these subtle changes in shift and feel and rhythm. The song starts off with two or three main ideas that it explores and kind of mutates over the course of the first minute and a half. It’s the small changes in drum accents or vocal phrasing that make a really huge impact on the songwriting here.

And then there’s Jarvis, who, as always, is doing things on the drum kit that definitely feel inhuman — especially these little hyperspeed triplet snare drum fills, which are just insane. They make my wrist hurt.

Then there’s the breakdown. It hits right in the middle of the song and carves out this new groove space that’s just impossible not to nod along with. From there, Swank flips into more of a shouted vocal delivery — more hardcore than guttural — and Jarvis just completely explodes. I can’t even describe what he’s doing rhythmically, but the effect is pure chaos in the best way. I would love to hear the isolated drums on this part.

And then you get to “Intestinal Suspension”, which might be the most over-the-top song title on the EP, and that’s definitely saying something. The lyrics are just as vivid and grotesque as you’d hope, culminating in one of the most brutal lines on the entire release, which is: “You swing by your guts, your time turns black. Your debt is unpaid.” This track seems to put the guitars more front and center. You’ve got these tumbling chromatic riffs that feel like they’re falling down a flight of stairs, and then, of course, you’ve got these big, dissonant chugs landing on the downbeat alongside Swank just going completely off over top all of it. As for the lyrics and the topic of this song, Paul Mazurkiewicz and Alex Webster are definitely laughing to themselves somewhere.

“False Deliverance” is the EP’s mosh track for sure, with loads of super groovy riffing and very punctual vocals. It’s also got one of the coolest riffs on Epoch of Immorality in the intro, as the chugs largely stick to the tom hits alongside some intermittent harmonics to really kind of break it up. It’s a very subtle effect with the harmonics, but when you finally hear it, you realize how cool it really is. “False Deliverance” only gets slower and more brutal, made all the heavier by some guest guitar work from Pyrexia‘s Chris Basile.

There’s a moment in the song around the 33-second mark where everything drops out and it’s just the guitars and the cymbals, and it kind of feels like the ground beneath you is starting to shift. And then bam! The whole band crashes in, but now in this swung 3/4 groove. It’s tight, it’s precise, but it still sounds like it could rip the walls down. Swank locks in, Basile solos, and it’s just this perfectly orchestrated moment of total aural violence.

And then there’s the final track, “Extirpated Human Existence”, and it’s, again, a total monster. It’s got all the ingredients in the previous tracks — groove, speed, chaos — but dials them all up and throws in one final guest, which is Don Campan from Waking the Cadaver. The song is a total onslaught. The pacing is relentless. The rhythm changes come hard and fast, and of course, Jarvis proves once again that he might be one of the hardest-working and best drummers in all of death metal. The guy is just a freaking engine, man.

What really makes this track stand out to me is the density of it. It’s packed with riffs, packed with tempo changes and vocal patterns, but none of it ever feels wasted or lost or like this kind of passing thought that is just trying to push to the next section. It’s a fitting end to an EP that never once lets up.

Ultimately, Epoch of Immorality is exactly what I thought it was going to be and it still totally exceeded my expectations. I figured this thing was gonna be brutal, hard-hitting, fast death metal, but this is ridiculous.

Epoch of Immorality is raw without being sloppy. It’s brutal without being one-note or monotonous or boring, and perhaps more importantly, it feels very alive. This does not feel snapped to the grid or fixed up or anything like that. There’s no sterile tones. There’s no really boring, hyper-fixed-up fast parts or anything like that. It’s just five musicians laying it down and letting the chaos breathe. And the EP really benefits from that attitude.

Epoch of Immorality is a solid 8 out of 10 for me, and I’m honestly hyped to see where Bludgeoned by Deformity goes next. If this is the foundation they’re laying for whatever they’ve got planned, the future is looking gross—but pretty good.

Oh, and before I go, shoutout to Jamie Rosier for the album artwork and to Brandon Studebaker for the logo and layout. If I saw this EP at a record store and I didn’t know the band, I would immediately assume this is a reissue of some long-lost demo released in the late ’90s or early 2000s, and I would definitely be flipping this over to see what record label ended up reissuing that—only to find out that it’s obviously new. So they definitely nailed that aesthetic. It looks grimy, it sounds filthy, and the whole thing just feels real.

I really like this.

Hey, thank you so much for watching. What did you think of Bludgeoned by Deformity’s debut EP? Let me know in the comments below.