Shat out of hell, indeed. That’s the sonic stench that permeates the epically unpronounceable, utterly indecipherable and altogether uncompromising sound of Ohio’s notorious gore-merchants, SANGUISUGABOGG. Homicidal Ecstasy, the ‘Bogg’s second Century Media platter of splatter isn’t merely a return to the “down-tuned drug death” that defined 2021’s Tortured Whole. It’s the fluid-streaked byproduct of a band that hit the road like crazed serial killers and never looked back as they plunged deeper into a celebration of Mortician-worshiping brutal death metal sounds and splatter classics like Dead-Alive. They also became a badass live and studio proposition in the process.
SANGUISUGABOGG’s bloody rise (their name, in fact, is an anagram for ‘Bloody Toilet’) was as unexpected to the underground death metal sect as it was for the ‘Bogg.. After releasing Pornographic Seizures in 2019 on the cult Maggot Stomp label, the foursome quickly won fans for their blasts of sludgy, determined riffing, tongue-severed-from-cheek, gross-out humor and nods to hardcore and 90’s East Coast death metal. “The logo definitely helped,” smirks Devin. “It’s the Nike swoosh of death metal!” Hitting the road with the likes of Creping Death, Frozen Soul and Vomit Forth, SANGUISUGABOGG received a pile of plaudits including Brooklyn Vegan putting them on a Most Anticipated Albums list next to genre titans like Carcass. “We got mentioned on NPR shortly after we dropped the first track off our EP!” says Swank, still in disbelief. “SANGUISUGABOGG was literally something that came together out of thin air. The first time we got together, we wrote and recorded our first four songs. Something was in the air.”
Homicidal Ecstasy isn’t merely a musical maturation for the gore-obsessed boys of the ‘Bogg. While Swank’s lyric writing sessions are still “fueled on coffee with a horror movie playing in the background”, this isn’t exclusively the gross-out show of SANGUISUGABOGG past. “It goes deeper this time, into the psycho-sexual, body-horror, why what some people see as perverse or fetishistic, can also be perfectly normal,” says Devin. “There’s even a song called ‘Mortal Admonishment’ where I talk about how I deal with death. I wanted to write a song about my grandmother and how I got the news about her cancer and how I internalized it. It’s standard in death metal to talk about death but who has talked about the grieving process?
“It’s kind of an homage to real life,” says the frontman. “When shit hits the fan, no one’s really safe.” Reconstituted, regurgitated and reenergized, SANGUISUGABOGG walks among us. Let the Homicidal Ecstasy begin!