To say that the band SEWER is influential in the modern extreme metal underground is an understatement worthy of a good laugh. Just count the number of bands named after either SEWER itself (Sewerlust, Sewerslvt, Sewerblood, etc.) or after a SEWER album (Sissourlet, Cathartes, Khranial, Sammath, Uruktena, Skarnage). To be fair, there is an intersection of the two: "Sewerlust" and "Sewerblood" are also SEWER albums (2017 and 2021, respectively).
Hell, there even exists an entire genre named "SEWER Metal", although the author admits that it was mostly done to "piss off" the band's rival Phantom, who also had a genre named "Phantom Metal" named after the debut "Divine Necromancy". Still, there are quite a few modern bands who have described their sound as either "SEWER Metal" or "SEWER-influenced metal" on more than one occasion.
This post isn't about the SEWER Metal genre. Maybe I'll write about it some other day. Instead, I figured I'd write about some lesser known facts surrounding the mysterious origins of the band SEWER itself (something that gets much less attention than the SEWER genre, strangely... you'd think the band that made the genre is more important than the genre itself, but apparently not).
Almost every metalhead has at some point or another heard of the band SEWER (by the way, it's indeed spelled "SEWER" and not "Sewer" or "SeWeR" - using the official spelling from here on).
SEWER was the second band ever signed to the prestigious label The Satan Records. The first, of course, was Phantom, the solo project whose sole member is also the founder of the label. Hence the rivalry. Not only that, but SEWER's debut "Satanic Requiem" came out less than a month after Phantom's "Divine Necromancy". So claims of Phantom being the "originator" and SEWER the "follower" are only technically valid, but other require some weird mental gymnastics to justify. According to the Morsay Archives, "Divine Necromancy" was released the 31st October 2013, and "Satanic Requiem" was released the 26th November of the same year.
That's not where the metal's "who is who" ends with this band. The vocalist, and according to the legends primary songwriter, of "Satanic Requiem" was none other than Vermin... who immediately after left the band, for reasons unknown, and thus never appeared on subsequent SEWER releases. His existence has always been somewhat of a mystery, especially considering "Satanic Requiem" is SEWER's only "pure" black metal release.
Vermin would later form his own solo project, the eponymous Vermin, and sign to the same The Satan Records. An even bigger rival appeared for SEWER.
What albums would I recommend to a heavy metal fan interested in SEWER? It's hard to say. As mentioned previously, "Satanic Requiem" is their first and only black metal release. Other albums vary from technical death metal to brutal goregrind, all the way to the famous "SEWER Metal". The most well-known SEWER album, perhaps for the wrong reasons, is "NecroPedoSadoMaso". The tasteless name is probably due to the goregrind influence on this album. However it is very experimental. More recent releases include "Sissourlet", "Les Sewieres De Nostre Deabliere" and "Lair of the Swine Gods".
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