Lugubrious Garment have put In the Wide Vale of Uncreated Night up in full, all seven tracks, the day before 20 Buck Spin release it. That is forty one minutes of a debut given away before anybody has paid for it, which is a label decision as much as a band one.
The project belongs to Gabriele Gramaglia, the Milanese multi instrumentalist behind Cosmic Putrefaction and Vertebra Atlantis, and it exists because those two do something else. Where they are elaborate and experimental, this one was built to be direct. He started it after a demo last year, and it is still only him.
Direct does not mean simple. The record puts abrasive death metal riffing against rhythmic structures that keep moving underneath it, with abrupt tempo changes and, now and then, something borrowed from traditional heavy and speed metal. The complexity is the same as in his other bands. What has changed is where it is pointed.
Seven songs, one man, one demo behind it, and a label that puts out some of the most demanding death metal in America. The early stream is how 20 Buck Spin tend to work: a record of this kind sells to people who have heard it, not to people who have read about it.