Miserable Failure – Death March (Review)

This is the latest release from Miserable Failure, (or MSRBLFLR), a French death metal/grindcore band.

This enigmatic act have been quiet since 2017’s Alone, (at least with this project), but now they’re back with the beautifully adorned Death March. Containing just one 22-minute track, (made up of three named movements), this is a welcome return from this talented group.

The musical style is a hideous mix of extreme elements, brought together under a grindcore aegis that allows the band the freedom to roam within their chosen landscape of devastation and chaos. Technical mathcore, death metal brutality, noise enhancements, techjazz workouts, blackened hatred, and scathing lethal grind are all used to great effect to really bring this work to life.

The band’s intricate extremity presents across a range of different paces, moods, and styles, as you might expect from the above paragraph. We get subjected to everything from frenetic mayhem, to jagged off-kilter rhythms, to large swathes of dissonant darkness, and much else besides. It’s as if Today Is the Day, Brutal Truth, Comity, and Deathspell Omega all colluded to produce something dark, malignant, and violent.

Death March is an exemplar of multifaceted brutality. It has an experimental quality to it that’s not weighed down by expectations or an inability to deliver results; Miserable Failure know what they’re doing with this sort of atypical style.

Highly recommended.