Re-Buried – Flesh Mourning Review

By Steel Druhm

My second discount ticket to Scum Town in one week and the third since July started, Re-Buried’s sophomore outing, Flesh Mourning, brings more gruesome death to wallow in. These cretins of the crypt left a favorable impression on Olde Steelio with their 2023 Repulsive Nature debut, courtesy of hideously inspired death vocals and crushing riff work. It felt massive, monolithic, and inevitable, and the sheer weight of it all overcame occasional gaps in their songcraft. Flesh Mourning is more of the same festering, moldy-oldey brand of death with one foot in the morgue and the other in the swamp, with vocals that sound like a dying hobo wrenching out the contents of his ulcerated stomach after a long night of on-the-cheap debauchery. And like the debut, Flesh Mourning is short, leaning toward anorexic. How can that recipe fail to earn a Michelin Star at the Slop House of Steel? Let’s poke the putridities with the pokey stick

Things open promisingly enough with vocalist Chris Pinto vomiting forth a feral hairball before the slime-flavored riffs kick in, and you get a standard yet basically effective mid-tempo death ditty without bells and whistles, but plenty of creepy atmosphere and phlegmy noises. It’s essentially Autopsycore, but lacking the jackhammer power heard at key moments on Repulsive Nature, and it feels a bit…safe. “Jagged Psyche” feels more brutish and nasty with extra vigor in the riffs, but the band seems stuck in a mid-tempo plod and struggles to kick into higher gears. This quickly becomes the story of Flesh Mourning as song after song duplicates these middling tempos with everything motoring along at a safe speed with too few bursts of speed and aggression. Worse still, the tracks aren’t as memorable as last time, and they all sound way too similar due to the consistent pacing and writing style.

“Rotted Back to Life” features some extra-heavy grooves that wake you up a bit, but it’s hard to shake the nagging feeling that this is all standard and recycled fare without an identity of its own. As things grind along in a “we have Bolt Thrower at home” manner with little variation in pacing, it falls to Chris Pinto to keep things interesting by deploying all manner of hideous sounds and monster moaning. He apes a staggering ghoul or a hospice patient in agony, and it’s impressive, but it isn’t enough to keep the material from bleeding into a big, greasy mush where one song becomes indistinguishable from the next. At just under 30 minutes, there isn’t much meat on the corpse bone, and things end with a 2-plus minute instrumental outro that’s all atmosphere and no payoff. It’s clear Re-Buried didn’t have a wealth of inspiration in the writing room and struggled to churn out a mere handful of basic, generic death ditties. That’s quite disappointing.

Chris Pinto is the star here, as he’s one of the most committed death metal vocalists out there. His weird body horror noises are wild, especially his hairball trick, which features prominently across the album. He’s a gem in search of a skilled jeweler, as the material he’s given to work with simply doesn’t deliver the knockout power his performance deserves. Paul Richards and Eddie Bingaman know all the death metal tropes and tricks and craft spot-on impersonations of classic Autopsy and Incantation fare, but so much of what they do here revolves around mid-tempo chugging and slight variations on the same kinds of swampy riffs, so it takes a hyper-intense listen to divine the differences between the individual tracks. If they wanted to create a 26-minute uni-glob effect, they accomplished it.

Flesh Mourning is a step backward from Repulsive Nature. The blunt force of the prior album is simply not here, replaced by a pornucopia of monotonous riffs and crazed cavern hollaring. It doesn’t stick or hold the attention, and while there are isolated cool/interesting bits and pieces, it’s really just off-brand Autopsy with Tomb Mold on it, and it’s devoid of songs that scream replay or demand dissemination onto playlists. It seems Re-Buried lack a potent muse and can’t craft a full-length album with consistently killer tunes, and they’re trending downwards early into their career. I hope for a speedy recovery, but the patient’s prognosis isn’t looking good.

Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Translation Loss
Websites: re-buried.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/reburieddeath | instagram.com/reburied_death
Releases Worldwide: July 18th, 2025

#20 #2025 #AmericanMetal #Autopsy #DeathMetal #Disma #Incantation #Jul25 #ReBuried #RepulsiveNature #Review #Reviews #TombMold #TranslationLossRecords #Undeath #Undergang

Filth – Time to Rot Review

By Steel Druhm

Looks like Steel is in the infectious bacteria cultures again! And what do I find among the stained petri dishes but Sweden’s Filth. This upstart death crew may be young, but their style is old and decayed. Forsaking the formulas fatal to the flesh preferred by most Swedish acts (AKA DisEntombed shenanigans), the sound of their Time to Rot debut is all about slime-sucking morgue lickers like Incantation, Autopsy, and Disma. That brings it closer to Rotpit than any Left Hand Path you might make a wrong turn on. What Filth offer is scabby, cavernous hellscapes with beastial caveman riff violence oozing over all your weeping sores and into your maggot-infested ear sockets. This is why you came here, right?

Filth introduce themselves in savage fashion on opener “Odious Obsession.” This is the obvious album highlight and demonstrates why you need to worry about what Filth can do. It’s a swampy death chestnut with mucilaginous, basement-level vocals, punctuated by ridiculously fat, beefy power chugs that shake your foundations and loosen your bowels. There’s a goodly similarity to Rotpit, but all the infamous sleaze merchants of yore are honored in these grotesque body mulching sounds. This is what I need MOAR of, so pump this diseased cadaver goo right into my veins. The title track is less aggressive and more about a creeping, crawling mid-tempo slither with mucous-encrusted riff tendril slapping all within reach. There are also some wonderfully eerie, ice-cold, and atmospheric leads to make you feel alone and uneasy. It’s a bit too long in the snaggle tooth, but it’s effectively riffy, rotten, and rancid. “Live in Agony, Die in Pain” is also quite fierce, blasting and thrashing your ass into the dust before transitioning to shambling power grooves and then bringing out the doom hammer for some Incantation-esque dour dirgery. It’s all over the damn map tempo-wise, but it hangs together.

Unfortunately for Filth, when you offer up a short, under 30-minute debut, the songs need to hit above their weight to leave a bone impression. While nothing on Time to Rot could be considered bad, several tracks fall in that nebulous decent-to-good slot where there are cool pieces, but also some generic recycling of things you’ve heard many times before. I think “Flesh Dress” is entertaining, but it isn’t the kind of track I’ll be dumping onto playlists or forcing Madam X to endure on repeat. Closer “Emaciated” is another tune that has the goods at certain moments, but ends up feeling a bit standard issue when all is said and dead. This leaves Time to Rot with definite highs and a few middle-of-the-roaders with a semi-flat tire. I like what Filth are doing quite a bit, I just need them to operate closer to the level heard on “Odious Obsession” to really stand out from the cavern crowd. At a slim 29 minutes, you expect 6-7 bangers that stick to the roof of the skull, and the bulk of these creepers just miss that level of shitfun.

Riff-wise, Sebastian and Ismael come to kill and bring a respectable collection of nasty bits to the autopsy. The leads often feel like a slithering abomination from an H.P. Lovecraft pulper, and there are some effective efforts to pattern harmonies and solos on old-time horror movie soundtracks. That said, the concrete deforming power stomps on “Odious Obsession” are tough to top and you keep waiting for more of them as the album shambles along. Per handles both vocals and drums, and does a fine job at both. His death vocalizations are appropriately inhuman and seem to be emerging from some unholy crevice in the earth, and he’s scummy enough to sell the material properly. The talent is there for Filth, they just need to elevate the songcraft a few notches to get deeper into the body cavity.

Time to Rot is a brutish opening salvo by a young act with potential. It’s not always in high gear, but when it is, you’ll be impressed. The fact that even the lesser cuts still have enough gnarly to keep you from skipping them is a positive, and I don’t think Filth are too far off from taking the next step toward badass ass-kickery. I’m rooting for them to get even more filthy next time. I like it real dirty, baby.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Rotted Life
Website: mesacounojo.bandcamp.com
Releases Worldwide: July 18th, 2025

#2025 #30 #Autopsy #DeathMetal #Disma #Filth #Incantation #Jul25 #Review #Reviews #Rotpit #RottedLifeRecords #SwedishMetal #TimeToRot

Stenched – Purulence Gushing From the Coffin Review

By Steel Druhm

In the week when Rotpit makes their revolting return to the death metal sweepstakes, I also signed up to cover the debut by the unheralded one-man Mexican death metal project Stenched. All my enthusiasm was focused on a particular hole in the ground full of decay so thusly, I approached Purulence Gushing From the Coffin not expecting much. That’s until the bucket of week-old pig organs got dumped over my head by the abhorrent sounds Stenched brought to the corpse buffet. This is one extremely unpleasant and toxic cesspool full of the most horrible poo-goo the mind can imagine, and with zero sanitation protocols in place, even a few minutes with this scum-muck might make you feel like you’ve contracted a loathsome disease. In fact, you should count on it. But does rancid and offensive equal good in the death metal metrics employed by AMG Industries? Let’s sup the cess together.

Mere seconds into opener “Morbid Mass of Repulsive Purlence,” your initial instinct will be to recoil in terror. The sound features fearsome pustules of early Carcass and Disma, and there’s a heavy dose of Demilich floating in the managed waste too. This makes for a rank and fetid soundscape through which founder and sole occupant “Adrian” drags us kicking and screaming. Riffs slither moistly with great menace and Adrian’s vocals emanate from somewhere south of the sub-sub-basement near the sewer vent. If music ever felt mucilaginous, this does. But beyond sounding hideous, the song grabs hold of you with biting suckers and refuses to let go. It’s a freakishly compelling sound and once it gets hooks in, you’re truly fucked. When it’s over and you disentangle yourself from the tentacles of some unknown horror, you get slimed by “Mucus, Phlegm and Bile.” Yes, that’s the title and yes, it accurately conveys what’s coming for you. It’s like something off Carcass’ Reek of Putrefaction taken a few weeks past maximum decomposition and it’s fooking gnarly. I love it and am sickened by my love of it.

The album gets better and better as it pulls you deeper into the gunk and gloop. “Suppurating Cranial Cavity” is at a whole other level, harnessing a world-breaking mid-tempo plod that pulverizes everything and everyone you ever loved As Adrian wretches and vomits his guts over the bloody spectacle. The riffs are oily and noxious and leave scum trails everywhere. This may well be my Death Metal Song o’ the Year and I can’t get enough of this foul-tasting stuff. But wait, there’s more! The riffs on “Death Manical Obsession” are aces and turn an already effective tune into a raving flesh golem. Mr. Stenched does well to balance creeping doom with OSDM tropes and Swedeath d-beats in a way that keeps things unpredictable and fresh. “Eye Socket Pus Emanation” does this bait-and-switch especially well as it cycles through tempos and kicks your face completely apart in the process. At just under 32 minutes, Stenched pack a lot of sickness into a short symphony window and the writing keeps the individual tracks moving and gore-grooving. The production is full of murk, with Adrian’s guttural croaks and godawful noises buried in the mix, rising like some eldritch abomination through the blood and mud. The guitar tone is satisfyingly wet and punctures the brain stem in all the ways I love.

I can’t say enough about how well Adrian assembled this panoply of pestilence. His riffage is great and always grimy and scab-encrusted. You can almost picture the leads slithering under locked doors to get at you. His ability to jump tempos from funeral doom-esque to punky thrash and mid-tempo crushing is admirable and every time a song threatens to grow tedious, he makes something happen to hold interest. His vocals are often not much more than deep, indecipherable spoken words but they work very well and his little vomit accents are spun gold. He’s clearly a student of all things death and he uses every genre trick and trope to get his compositions across the finish line. It’s his writing that shines the brightest, as this style could easily end up sounding too one-note and muddy, but it never does here.

Purulence Gushing From the Coffin is Plato’s ideal form of a death metal album, and Steel is with that old toga-wearing bastard on this one. It combines everything I love dearly about Incantation, Carcass, Demilich, and Chthe’ilist into one savory mouthful, and brother, it is toothsome! This shit makes Rotpit seem entirely hygienic by comparison, and that’s no easy feat. Did I mention this album smells like feet? Olde, rotting hobo feet. Now smell the agony of dem feet and get fully Stenched.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Me Saco Un Ojo
Website: instagram.com/stenchedmetal
Releases Worldwide: November 26th, 2024

#2024 #40 #Carcass #CtheIlist #DeathMetal #Demilich #Disma #MeSacoUnOjoRecords #MexicanMetal #Nov24 #PurulenceGushingFromTheCoffin #Review #Reviews #Stenched

DISMA are awesome. If you're into a doomy, cavernous metal sound that has a diverse mix of both super fast galloping beats AND doomy spots (a really killer OSDM feel - the RIFFS!) these guys are for you.

ALL Disma's stuff is great, but this is the one on Bandcamp- 'The Graveless Remains' EP from 2017.

https://seedofdoom.bandcamp.com/album/the-graveless-remains

#metal #DeathMetal #Disma #OSDM #Doom #DoomMetal #IndieMusic #IndieMetal