If Japan’s death metal scene is a body, then Anatomia is a putrid cyst that’ll never drain or mend. The Tokyo-based two-piece have been making disgusting, goosebump-inducing death-doom for almost twenty years now, with each album sounding more like a gush of rotten bodily fluid than the last. This year’s upcoming Corporeal Torment only furthers the band’s legacy, offering listeners three sprawling tracks of howling death metal before closing out with a 20-minute epic.
Album opener “Dismemberment” is an excellent example of what the band do so well. The track opens with some reliably churning riffs and shrieks, giving listeners the outright assault they crave. But it’s later on, as the band bring in their zombie-plod riffs and gang-gurgles, that one gets the full experience of being bathed in filth. It’s a killer track that speaks to just how satisfying Corporeal Torment is, and why Anatomia are still dissolving bodies two decades on.
Before blasting our exclusive premiere of “Dismemberment,” we asked drummer/vocalist Takashi Tanaka to fill us in on the band’s current unholy activities…
You’ve released tons of demos and splits since 2017’s Cranial Obsession — what led to the creation of another full-length studio record?
Around in early 2019, Yukiyasu [Fukaya, guitars and vocals] left the band, and since then we have been putting more focus on recording new materials. We knew that we wanted to record a new album too, especially because we had that line-up change and we didn’t want to spend too much before the next album. So we started working on this album in early 2020, soon after we finished recording some split songs. Probably COVID-19 pandemic was one of the reasons too.
It seems like this record goes hard in either direction — the fast parts are extra-fast, the slow parts are extra slow. Was that intentional?
Its intentional. We had an idea to put a faster song in the beginning, just like we did in the previous album, and then it goes slower and abysmal towards the end. I wrote the first two songs, fast one and slow one, and then Jun [Tonosaki, bass and vocals] wrote the other two, which are obviously darker and slower. So we already had an image before we went in the writing process.
Tell me about writing/recording “Dismemberment.” What about that track makes it stand out in your mind?
As mentioned in the previous answer, I wrote this first song. I started off from writing it with one riff that Jun brought in as the intro, and I arranged it and added some parts. I ended up with moving that Jun’s riff to the last part of the song though. I first recorded drums by my self, and then Jun added all strings, then I recorded the vocals. This is how we do for the recordings today. This is the fastest song on this album, and the fast part lasts only one and half minute. It’s simply as an introduction, or like dragging you into the abysmal death.
Listen to our exclusive premiere of Anatomia’s “Dismemberment” below:
Anatomia’s Corporeal Torment comes out May 20th, and is available for preorder.
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Words by Chris Krovatin
