The Erosion of Sanity

by Ed Rivadavia

Canadian death metal troupe Gorguts delivered their second album, The Erosion of Sanity, in 1993, and given the general approval accorded their excellent debut two years earlier, expectations for this new effort to supersede it were understandably high. Too high, perhaps, as what initially appeared to be a promising start via the manic flurry of "With Their Flesh, He'll Create" and its more melodically inclined follow-up, "Condemned to Obscurity," soon gave way to a slew of technically astounding but surprisingly featureless death metal songwriting. Other than proving that not even a Franco-Canadian accent can be detected when grunted from the depths of one's bowels, Gorguts vocalist/guitarist Luc Lemay and his crew seemed overly preoccupied with showing off their incredible musicianship to focus on lifting very many outstanding moments above the billowing clouds churned up by their flailing limbs. In the process, new compositions like the title track, "Orphans of Sickness," and "A Path Beyond Premonition" forgo the discreet but crucial melodic finesse that had made the band's debut reminiscent of giants Sepultura and Death, in exchange for a no less carefully constructed but exceedingly one-dimensional sort of brutality -- the sort that was concurrently being championed by newer bands like New York's Suffocation, interestingly enough. In other words, Gorguts were probably just trying to evolve with the times, but in their case such evolution met with slightly less than satisfactory results -- a point driven home by the scant eight songs summoned for The Erosion of Sanity. Still, the album is anything but a failure -- just a questionable change of direction that Gorguts were ultimately unable to vindicate or develop after Roadrunner Records suddenly dropped them a short time later. Gorguts would eventually return half a decade hence, but in a significantly altered form that also failed to advance their career. [Note: In 2004 The Erosion of Sanity was remastered, reissued, and paired with its predecessor, Considered Dead, as part of Roadrunner's Two from the Vault series.]