Album Review: Bloom by Disfiguring the Goddess
Album artwork for Bloom by Disfiguring the Goddess
For someone who has spent years pushing the limits of extreme music, “Bloom” feels like the perfect collision between Cameron Argon's brutally heavy Disfiguring the Goddess project and the electronic chaos of his Big Chocolate side project. On paper, that combination sounds like it should never work. In reality, it works so well that it's almost unfair. It's the kind of album that constantly catches you off guard, but somehow every strange idea lands exactly where it should.
If you've never listened to Disfiguring the Goddess, stop what you're doing after reading this and go put on literally any release. Then come back and read this again. It'll make a lot more sense. Cameron Argon has spent years proving he's one of the most creative people in extreme music, and “Bloom” feels like the culmination of everything he's experimented with over the years. It takes the crushing heaviness of Disfiguring the Goddess and smashes it together with the electronic influences, hip hop production and complete lack of boundaries that made Big Chocolate stand out in the first place.
One of the biggest reasons “Bloom” works so well is because it never takes itself too seriously. The album is ridiculous, and it knows it. Rather than trying to be the heaviest or most technical death metal record ever made, it just throws every influence imaginable into the mix and somehow makes it feel natural. One minute you're listening to atmospheric, almost ambient passages that make you want to lie down and question your life choices. The next you're hit with frantic grindcore d-beats, crushing downtempo breakdowns or riffs that sound genuinely evil. Then, just when you've settled into the chaos, you're greeted by a random SpongeBob SquarePants sample that comes completely out of nowhere and scares the life out of you.
That kind of unpredictability is what defines “Bloom.” It feels like a love letter to the completely unhinged spirit of late 2000s deathcore, back when bands weren't afraid to throw in movie quotes, internet memes or ridiculous samples simply because they could. If that era walked into the room wearing skinny jeans, a fitted cap and three studded belts before immediately punching you in the face, it would probably sound exactly like this album.
The opening track sets the tone immediately. Clocking in at just over 100 seconds, it throws modern deathcore riffs over what honestly sounds like a Polyphia instrumental mixed with a phonk beat. It's one of those moments where you find yourself nodding along before suddenly stopping to ask why there's a hip hop beat underneath one of the heaviest riffs you've heard all week. The funny thing is that question never really gets answered, because “Bloom” doesn't care about explaining itself; it simply moves onto the next insane idea before you've had time to process the last one.
From there the album barely gives you a chance to breathe. It's a relentless barrage of downtempo riffs, absurdly heavy vocals and unexpected electronic elements that constantly appear just when you think you've figured out where a song is heading. Hip hop beats weave in and out of the tracks without feeling forced, ambient sections provide brief moments of relief before another breakdown arrives, and every song somehow manages to carve out its own identity.
What's especially impressive is how different every track feels. In lesser hands, an album this all over the place would sound like a complete mess. Here it almost feels like a compilation featuring 17 different bands, each contributing a single song, yet everything still feels connected by Cameron Argon's unmistakable production style and songwriting. No matter how weird things get, you always know who's behind it.
If you're already familiar with Disfiguring the Goddess, you'll know Argon is ridiculously talented as both a musician and producer. The production throughout “Bloom” is massive, with every riff hitting hard without drowning out the electronic elements or vocal layers. It's polished without losing the raw aggression that makes extreme music exciting, and every strange production choice feels deliberate rather than gimmicky.
There are several moments where you have to rewind tracks because you won’t believe what you’d just heard. Some songs demand a third, fourth or even fifth listen simply because there was so much happening. Track four, AWOL, completely stops you in your tracks. It’s so captivatingly bizarre that housework got paused to double check that another album hadn’t started playing. Somehow, even after all that confusion, it ended up becoming one of the standout moments on the record.
Track five, Mask Off, might be the clearest example of how fearless this album is. Throughout the song, Chris Hansen Dateline NBC samples randomly appear between walls of crushing death metal riffs and Argon's monstrous vocal performance. It sounds completely absurd when written down, but within the context of “Bloom”, it somehow makes perfect sense. That's really the best way to describe the entire album. Nothing about it should work, yet almost everything does.
“Bloom” refuses to fit into a single genre or follow an established formula. Instead, it embraces chaos, nostalgia and experimentation in equal measure, creating one of the most entertaining extreme metal releases in recent memory. It isn't just heavy for the sake of being heavy; it's creative, unpredictable and genuinely fun from start to finish, reminding you that sometimes the best music comes from artists who completely ignore the rules.
FFO: Skrillex, Snuffed On Sight, The Browning
SCORE: 8/10
Bloom is out 31st of July on all streaming platforms via Seek & Strike.
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