Sanguisugabogg uncovers a horrifying reality

On earlier albums, punishing Columbus death metal band Sanguisugabogg sometimes struck a more cartoonishly violent pose, with frontman Devin Swank bellowing lyrics that played like cut scenes from a blood-splattered Eli Roth film. 

But on new full-length Hideous Aftermath (Century Media Records), released in October, the horrors are occasionally steeped in modern realities, giving the album a deeply unsettling effect that adds to its bone crushing impact. Witness “Heinous Testimony,” loosely based on one of countless school shootings, which captures the terror, grotesqueness, and sheer inhumanity of these recurring tragedies in a way few if any songs ever have. “The teachers scream at what I’ve done,” Swank growls in his graveled, guttural howl, going on to paint a vividly horrific picture of a narrator who stands at complete emotional remove from the carnage they’ve left in their wake.

“I wanted to make it very bone-chilling, because when you read up on those kinds of things, the person behind the trigger has no remorse or regard for anybody that’s in their path,” said Swank, who will join his Sanguisugabogg bandmates in concert at King of Clubs on Sunday, Nov. 30 – the group’s first hometown show since Hideous Aftermath surfaced. “I didn’t want to make it like a memorial, or like, hey, let’s remember these people [lost]. … At the end of the day, the person was shooting people they had probably never exchanged more than one or two words with, and they felt nothing. I wanted to expand on that and make it more about how horrible and horrifying something like that is.”

Other songs, such as “Repulsive Demise,” take a comparatively big picture view, Swank detailing a rapidly crumbling world that stands on the brink of societal collapse. The song surfaced in late 2024 following an intensive year of touring that saw the musician play 182 shows stretched between coasts, which he said gave him a unique view into our ongoing societal freefall.  “I’d just been all over the United States watching everything turn to shit,” he said, and sighed. “And then we’re ending a tour and it’s coming into November and it’s time to vote.”

That’s not to say Sanguisugabogg has completely abandoned its slasher fan-fic tendencies (opener “Rotted Entanglement,” for one, plays like an X-rated take on “Corpse Bride”), but there’s a willingness throughout Hideous Aftermath to engage more with the current moment. “I matured a lot. And I see the world around me, and it’s not getting any better,” Swank said. “And I think the things that actually go on in real life are scarier than anything I could make up, so I decided to expose that more on this record.”

A similar maturation has taken place musically, the band decamping with producer Kurt Ballou to his GodCity Studio in Salem, Massachusetts, where the collaborators worked to stretch beyond the caveman brutality of early records, both sharpening and expanding upon Sanguisugabogg’s sound. Resultant tracks such as “Semi Automatic Facial Reconstruction” pile on blast beats that detonate like rapidly triggered landmines, while “Repulsive Demise” folds in elements of industrial death metal reminiscent of Birmingham pioneers Godflesh.

“We wanted to add a lot more nuance to our sound without abandoning what we know,” said Swank, who pointed to the record’s embrace of odd time signatures and the fact that at least one track includes a Dillinger Escape Plan-esque drum fill as a means to highlight this subtle evolution. “When people kind of rope us into a low-IQ, braindead, caveman thing, I think it’s because the music is so stripped, and it’s so heavy and jarring that you’re back to primitive, you’re back to monkeys. It’s like the whole Darwin scale is flipped on its head and you grow hair on your knuckles again. And I think that’s just where our music takes you.”

These extremes were further magnified by Ballou’s deft production, which took the Sanguisugabogg sound and amplified it, making the band come across as “more serious and more evil,” as Swank explained it.

While the music took shape in-studio – its dark vibes augmented by Salem’s occult-rich environs – Swank penned the bulk of the lyrics on his own, describing his creative process as one of deep isolation. In these moments, the musician said, he distanced himself from family members and friends, set aside any devices that might connect him with the outside world, and spent long stretches embodying a range of horrific personas. 

“And in those hours, I’m completely immersed in the story of it, almost like I’m playing all of the characters,” said Swank, who compared this process with John Malkovich stepping inside his own head in “Being John Malkovich,” or Eddie Murphy portraying every family member in “The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps.” “And it’s the same with being onstage, man. I get myself all riled up and get onstage and act like the scariest person alive, and then I turn it off the moment the last note ends. But, yeah, in those writing sessions where I’m completely immersed, it’s like I lose myself for a moment. … When I’m home and I’m around my family, I’m a loving guy, and I’m the youth football coach, and I’m this, and I’m that. But the second I’m writing or performing, I’m a deranged psychopath.”