Band:	Bloody Cumshot
Album:	Deflorantism
Style:	Melodic death metal
Release date:	December 2023

01. White Lies
02. Deflorantism
03. Dogmatic Beliefs
04. Tribadism
05. Fist Fuck Assassin
06. Chlamydia Rain
07. Breast Ripper
08. Whore With No Name
09. Enveloped In Darkness
10. Strangle Your Life
11. Eater Of The Unborn

One of the most ludicrous melodeath debuts in recent years gets an equally ludicrous follow-up.

A lot of the dialogue around Nymphomaniac, the debut from Japan’s Bloody Cumshot, focused around the aggressive vulgarity of the band name, song titles and album artwork, which altogether felt most fitting for a goregrind band, and in fairness it’s not unreasonable for these factors to draw attention. What made Nymphomaniac memorable to me, however, was just how insanely hooky it was; ‘Gothenburg-on-steroids’ is about the best way to describe it, and it really brought all the memorability in its melodies even while going almost constantly at 200 miles per hour. The same applies for Deflorantism; as much as the packaging is grotesque, the album itself is remarkable for different reasons.

Earlier this year, I came across Zemeth, whose 2-hour 2023 album (that length mitigated by the record being a re-recording of 2 previous releases) reminded me a lot of Bloody Cumshot; as it turns out, the same person, Junya Higuchi, is the mastermind of both projects. Zemeth’s music is calmer, more keyboard-centric and slightly more diverse, but both are rooted in extreme power metal and Gothenburg melodeath. One way in which Bloody Cumshot significantly deviates from Zemeth is in album length; Nymphomaniac was scarcely 28 minutes long, and Deflorantism is still very digestible at 36 minutes in length.

Both albums are in a sweet zone lengthwise for this style; as reliably hooky as the music is, the degree of excess in terms of tempo and energy is something more suited towards small doses. Still, if you enjoy Gothenburg metal done well like I do, Deflorantism is a joyful small dose; from the first notes of opening song “White Lies”, there’s a conveyor belt of frantically fast riffs and memorable leads. The chorus of this song, with its big triumphant guitar lead and purposeful drum rhythm, perfectly slots into an onslaught of ripping guitar work (riffs and solos) that goes straight for the jugular.

From that point on, there’s a flurry of songs in a similar template, each delivering tasty hooks straight out of the 90s; early In Flames feels like the most obvious influence on Bloody Cumshot, especially with some of the guitar leads and harmonic riffs in the banging title track, but the likes of Dark Tranquillity and Children Of Bodom have doubtless played their part in shaping Junya’s writing. In terms of highlights on Deflorantism beyond the first two songs, “Breast Ripper” has some hench tremolo riffs and cool faux-strings sounds, while the chorus guitar lead melodies in “Whore With No Name” constitute arguably the most memorable hook on the record.

Now, I think it’s fair to say that variety is not really a major factor when it comes to Bloody Cumshot; however, there was a dalliance with deathgrind brutality in one song on Nymphomaniac, and this time around there’s also a brief flirtation with firmer extremity. The song in question, “Chlamydia Rain”, has some malicious grooves with ugly guitar squeals and an absolute onslaught from the drums. Outside of this song, though, there’s still a general level of intensity that takes it beyond a lot of current melodeath, with some ballistic blasting and pulverizing drumming on the riotous and tremolo-heavy “Tribadism”, while the shrieks used as the primary vocal style for much of the album are replaced with some nasty growls on “Fist Fuck Assassin”.

Just as with the last album, Bloody Cumshot win no points for originality, but if you just want to hear good no-frills melodeath dialled up to the max, you could do an awful lot worse than Deflorantism. Perhaps this is a case study in not naming a genre after a geographical location, but based on their first two albums, the hottest Gothenburg metal around right now is based in Japan.