UK disgusting death metal fiends Cryptworm have been quite prolific since 2022. Featuring members of Cryptic Shift and Rothadas, their Spewing Mephitic Putridity debut was a nauseating dose of raw sewagecore that made Autopsy seem hygienic by comparison. They followed that up barely a year later with Oozing Radioactive Vomition, and things felt a bit rushed and less impactful. They wisely took some time off thereafter, and now they return with third outing, Infectious Pathological Waste. While their overall approach hasn’t changed much from album to album, the quality of the writing has varied. This time, it feels like they put a bit more thought into the compositions, and some of the vile charm of the debut resurfaces through the slime and scuzz. Nothing does the heart good quite like seeing a happy Cryptworm!

Opener “Gallons of Molten Hominal Goo” greets you like a decaying old friend, and the gruesome, repulsive sounds contain the distinct aroma of early Carcass. This lump of excrement could have appeared on Symphonies of Sickness and fit like a maggot in a gunshot wound. The riffs are fairly rudimentary but have weight, and the vocals by Hanyi Tibor (Rothadas) are a cross between an industrial garbage disposal and a frat-house beer-belching contest. They are fucking disgusting, purulent, and utterly incomprehensible, but damn if they aren’t entertaining. “Maimed and Gutted” is a standout, going for a frantic thrashy panic attack with Cannibal Corpse-isms buried in the basement. It’s a road-grader of a brutal death song that veers into slam territory at times, and the riffs are greasy, sticky, and bellicose. My favorite macabre ditty is “Embedded with Parasitic Larvae,” where, intentionally or not, Tibor sounds like an undead version of the Swedish Chef from The Muppet Show. I cannot tell you why this enhances my enjoyment as much as it does, but fuck yes, Chef!

Infectious Pathological Waste by Cryptworm

On “Drowning in Purulent Excrementia,” they go extra slammy, and kitman Jamie Wintle starts to hit something that should be the pong snare, but it sounds like he’s beating on a skull or a femur. It’s weird, but I kinda like it, and it’s way better than that godawful PONG-PONG-PONG sound some tech and slam bands foist on you. Not every track is a sure-fire hit though, with “Gastrointestinal Seepage” feeling a bit too leaden and lethargic, though I appreciate Tibor’s extra nasty vocals where he seems to be coughing up a hairball full of razor blades and asbestos. I could complain that this feels like a very one-note album, but what death metal album isn’t really? At a tight 32 minutes, it goes by fast enough, though several tracks do have bloat issues that crimp enjoyment. The style Cryptworm opt to play necessitates keeping things in a 3-4 minute window, and when they push further, things get ropey and dopey.

Tibor does a tremendous, unpleasant job on vocals, sounding completely inhuman at all times. His unbelievably cartoonish subterranean croaks are a thing of hideous beauty, and I can’t get enough of them. His guitarwork is also to be applauded, borrowing the most objectionable bits of gristle from Autopsy, Cannibal Corpse, and Incantation to fuel the Cryptworm diet. Some of the leads are quite hooky, and I especially love the big beefy power chugs that dot the landscape. As on Oozing Radioactive Vomition, however, the songwriting can be inconsistent, and they don’t always know when enough is enough. There are some sick burners here to aggravate the savage altered beast, but a few tracks feel underbaked and deliver weaker tentacle slaps.

Cryptworm are a band I can’t help but root for as I root around in their repellant leavings, but I want them to be MOAR consistently deadly with their offal hammer. There’s plenty of fun stuff on Infectious Pathological Waste to marinate in, and it all reeks of the slaughterhouse. When it’s good, it’s rurl good. When it’s just okay, it’s still pretty fookin’ entertaining. Someday these chaps are gonna get their maggot larvae in a row and then, watch out! Until then, there are worse ways to kill brain cells than these odious odes to the grave.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Me Saco Un Ojo
Websites: cryptworm.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/cryptworm | instagram.com/cryptwormofficial
Releases Worldwide: March 27th, 2026

Five years ago, I highlighted Invictus’ 2020 debut LP Catacombs of Fear as part of our year-end death metal roundup feature. Since then, the Japanese death metal trio toiled under the ground with a brutal live schedule and steadily wrote what might very well be my most highly anticipated follow-up in the death metal realm. Hot on the heels of killer releases from personal favorites like Depravity, and jumping just ahead of another highly anticipated salvo from Eximperitus, Invictus’ upcoming Nocturnal Visions has big shoes to fill and stiff competition to combat. But if anybody has the chops and the balls to do it, it’s Invictus.

Having only one previous album and a few scattered demos/singles to their name, Invictus haven’t messed with their formula very much since their inception. Boasting a killer combo of Demolition Hammer nastiness and Consuming Impulse-era Pestilence attack, Nocturnal Visions pushes 35 minutes of pure adrenaline. Nary a second faffs about with filler, fluffy atmosphere, or anything else that could be construed as something other than devout reverence to The Almighty Riff™. With each twist of phrase or shift in movement, guitarist/vocalist Takehitopsy Seki tears through an unrelenting assault of intense grooves, speedy thrashes, and writhing rhythms that don’t just open up pits, but rather rip open dimensional rifts straight to hell itself (“Altar of Devoted Slaughter,” “Wandering Ashdream”). Instead of relying on blasts for intensity, Haruki Tokutake’s percussive strategy focuses on machine-gun double-bass runs and thrashy skanks so brutally exacted upon my spine that I needed a back brace and headgear just to approach the second half—accommodations which in no way deterred my summary bodily encrushment (“Persecution Madness”). Bassist Toshihiro Seki clunks and clangs beneath the surface with a violent, hammering tone that, while not always as audible as it ought to be, nonetheless deepens the tonal quality of the record’s warm, slightly swampy production (“Nocturnal Visions”). Unlike many of those acts from whom Invictus draws inspiration, Seki’s vocals operate squarely inside the Incantation/Tomb Mold school of subterranean monstrosity. Counterintuitively, this sets the trio apart from their influences by hiding in plain sight with their contemporaries.

Nocturnal Visions by Invictus

Regardless of where you fall in the greater scope of metallic fandom, Nocturnal Visions is a magnificent showcase of energetic songwriting and devastating hookcraft. While the formula opener proper “Abyssal Earth Eradicates” utilizes feels and sounds familiar, Invictus executes it with a youthfulness, voracity, and dare I say exuberance that makes me forget for a moment the entirety of death metal’s history. As Nocturnal Visions progresses through its early movements, boasting killer tracks in “Altar of Devoted Slaughter,” “Lucid Dream Trauma,” and “Persecution Madness,” my ability to care about anything other than banging my head, grimacing like a gargoyle, and stomping my poor abused feet against the floor vanishes. What’s left is a mind-broken sponge reduced to primal instincts, with a vocabulary of one word, “Fuck!” exclaimed exclusively with each new swaggering groove or pummeling riff. Even after several dozen spins, pit monsters “Persecution Madness,” “Dragged Beneath the Grave,” and later highlight “Wandering Ashdream” received such frequent and aggressive verbal confirmation of their sheer awesomeness and perpetual energy that my coworker had to perform a wellness check. Even the daunting eight-minute closer “Nocturnal Visions” earns its keep here, switching up themes and reprising refrains just enough to keep my interest up and my engagement high.

That doesn’t leave much room for negatives, and indeed, few found purchase in my evaluation. Obviously, Nocturnal Visions exhibits nothing new or innovative; it’s simply doing classic death metal far better than most. Consequently, Invictus left some creativity and novelty on the table. They could easily pick up bits and bobs from that stack of potential ideas and bring an extra dimension to future efforts without sacrificing their core sound. Additionally, pacing Nocturnal Visions at such a blistering rate of speed so consistently across 35 minutes leaves a little to be desired in the way of songwriting dynamics. Tokutake in particular makes the most of his arsenal of patterns, fills, and tumbles to alleviate this condition, but not quite enough to cure it—see the otherwise ripping “Frozen Tomb.” Seki’s somewhat one-note vocal approach doesn’t always help matters in that respect, but his performance is rock-solid and dependable enough not to hurt either.

Of course, these critiques amount to mere nitpicks in the truest sense of the term. Nocturnal Visions is, simply put, a staggering monument to old-school death molded for the modern era. Invictus blasted my skull apart with their debut, but this sophomore effort is more than a worthy successor. Hear it!

Rating: Great!
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Me Saco Un Ojo Records
Websites: invictus3.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/Invictus
Releases Worldwide: January 26th, 2026

Ossuary – Abhorrent Worship Review

By Alekhines Gun

These days, it seems like people get their idea of what “cavernous” should sound like from people who read about caves in books. Incantation are supposed to be the torch bearers for the subgenre, but they have sounded more like a facsimile of the sound for decades, and even more filthy modern equivalents like Funebrarum or Vastum still manage to sound like a studio imitation of what should be a raw and organic aural depiction. Drilling through the limestone and sporting some concerningly bloody tools, Ossuary have arrived with their debut full-length Abhorrent Worship, with the promo itself promising the album will open up a cave for you, dear listener, to die in. I’m a big believer in being threatened with a good time, so grab your spelunking gear and watch out for the guano poisoning!

Ossuary have conjured up an excellent presentation of the cavernous sound. Abhorrent Worship sounds positively vile, with every riff drenched in grime and slithering sounds. The big reason for this is the disgusting bass tone offered up by Matt Jacobs. While never getting any solos or spotlight, his bass is cranked up in the mix and hits brown noise levels of depth, with a rattle that sounds like it’s rotting out the woofer on my speakers with every spin. This gives the Malignant Altar styled bounce of “Instinctual Prostration” or the vintage Autopsy waltz of “Inborn Scourge Unbound” reverb and depth, masterfully unleashing the echoing abandoned cave aesthetic. The guitars are no slouches in tone either, with Izzi Plunket summoning the spirit of the gone-before-their-time Cavurn1 in riff style while channeling demo-era Demilich filth in presentation. Whiffs of Suffering Hour treble peppers occasional moments (“Barren Lamentation”) while never giving into anything which could remotely be described as melodic, with sustained chords digging deeper into the earth’s crust in depth and sound.

And when Ossuary gets to really digging, the ground opens up to swallow you whole. “Volitional Entropy” leads in with one of the single greatest death/doom riffs I have ever heard, a massive earworm which evolves from a droning lurch into a titanic mantle-chucker as it builds and swirls. “Forsaken Offerings (To the Doomed Spirit)” channels vintage Tomb Mold into a build that collapses into a chuggathon and hellish blasts. “Barren Lamentation” acts as the grand album finale with a slow-building curtain closer of a groove, which is rendered more intense by the drumming of Nick Johnson picking up the pace as the droning repeats. Each song in Abhorrent Worship functions as a build to a climax, with at least one high-caliber riff to be found in every menacing cut.

The only downside to a tension-and-release style composition is that you have to be uniformly interesting in your transitions as much as your explosions, and it is here that Ossuary stumbles. Many chugging sections go on far too long (“Forsaken Offerings…” being the biggest offender), and not every climax impales you on the same stalagmite2. There’s a clear hierarchy of quality from song to song, and while the atmosphere is unrelenting and nothing slips underneath “good,” discernible highs and lows in the composition detract from the overall body of work. Cavernous death is inherently a limited style by its nature, and the only way to make up for that is with the writing being as uniformly well executed in composition as it is in tone. Abhorrent Worship absolutely nails the sound and aesthetic, and at their best, offer up a hellish vision of the most cavernous depths, but it doesn’t have the clear sense of gold-quality from beginning to end needed to make it stand out in an inherently monochrome genre.

Nevertheless, I have emerged from the cave covered in bat poo and blood that is disconcertingly not my own with tales of delight. Ossuary have presented an enjoyable presentation of the cavernous sound, and despite its compositional flaws, I find myself somewhat smitten. If they can make every song hit with the same pic axe sharpness while maintaining the foulness of their production, future releases will offer us bleak horrors indeed. For now, if you haven’t gone cave diving in a while, I highly recommend joining in a chorus of Abhorrent Worship for a good spiritual cleanse. Just make sure you bring extra batteries for your flashlight…

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Me Saco Un Ojo Records
Websites: Album Bandcamp | Official Instagram
Releases Worldwide: May 23rd, 2025

#2025 #30 #AbhorrentWorship #AmericanMetal #Autopsy #Cavurn #DeathMetal #Demilich #Incantation #MalignantAltar #May25 #MeSacoUnOjoRecords #Ossuary #Review #Reviews #SufferingHour #TombMold

Diabolizer – Murderous Revelations Review

By Tyme

‘O mighty sub-genre, how you vex me. As our human need to bring order to chaos and make sense of complexity increases, so does the proliferation of the sub-genre and its many sub-sub offshoots. Where once only death metal stood, today, a plethora of choices exist. And because that most un-descriptively generalized tag wasn’t enough, we now banter over the finer nuances of tech death vs. old school vs. melodic, brutal, ultra brutal, and more. I’m not deriding the importance of sub-categories and their use in the metalverse as much as I’m highlighting the fact that sometimes, it’s refreshing to run across an album that strikes at the heart of a genre. Enter Turkey’s Diabolizer. After receiving a coveted 4.0 from Holdeneye in 2021 for Khalkedonian Death, Diabolizer returns to rape your ears with its second unholy metal of death platter, Murderous Revelations. Will this sophomore effort find Diabolizer taking a step back from their well-received debut, or will the onslaught continue, another clawing leap toward the upper echelon of death metal practitioners?

Murderous Revelations‘ deliciously demonic cover art reveals much about Diabolizer‘s brand of death metal. Straight out of the get-go of hell’s gate, “Into the Depths of Diseased Minds” sears the senses with swirling speeds and tricky time signatures, a maelstrom of riffs that set the stage for what the entirety of Murderous Revelations has in store. With its founding lineup intact and still repping pedigree—members hail from Hyperdontia, Burial Invocation, and Engulfed—Diabolizer merges its Deicidedly Cannibal Corpseish chunk-n-chugs perfectly with rifferous technical velocity that’s full of Nileistic Krisiunisms. Reminiscing on a younger me hearing the likes of Malevolent Creation and Krisiun for the first time, Murderous Revelations hit like a time capsule, instantly returning me to a simpler age. It is a solid step forward that shows, once again, how Diabolizer shines with plenty of pristine performances and the ability to merge many styles into something so purely death metal it defies sub-categorization.

Diabolizer‘s guitar hero duo of Can and Mustafa drop savage riff after savage riff (“Purulent Divinity in Black Flames”) and bring tons of technically tornadic, swirling solos to bear with vile virtuosity (“Seeds of the Dethroned”). Malik’s excellent finger-happy bass work provides many a Ramen noodle moment (“Bloodstream Bonegrinder”), complementing Abberant, who barbarously bashes through every track on Murderous Revelations, laying down a vicious sledge to the head style drummeling. Completing Diabolizer’s cadre of calamity is vocalist Abomination. His brutal, ground-shaking roars still harken to scene veterans like Glen Benton and Christian Älvestam, to be sure. Still, I hear a fair amount of Barney Greenway’s Napalm Death snarl in Abomination’s lower register, and this serves as a foil to his newly developed vomitous rasp (“Hogtied in Razorwire”), which took me aback at first but has grown on me with repeat listens.

Making a strong case that Diabolizer should be this Turkish quintet’s main gig, the songwriting on Murderous Revelations is top-notch and wastes nary a moment of its value-packed run time. A relentless onslaught that maintains a breakneck pace, Murderous Revelations provides listeners with nearly no air to breathe. The only moments of respite come at the outset of “Set the World Ablaze (“Infernal Dawn”) with its majestic, mid-paced riff and tremolo opening and the brief fade-in to “Deathmarch of the Murderous Tyrant,” which revs up and shoves its boot right back down on your windpipe. There’s so much I like about Murderous Revelations that I’ve been racking my brain, searching for some balancing critique to levy. So, while I’m still not 100% on board with Abominations’ new, raspy tone at times, that quibble is a minor one.

Diabolizer provides bree-bree-free brutality with layman’s terms technicality and enough chug-chugs to satiate my inner caveman. Murderous Revelations is death metal performed as Satan intended. It left my face in a state of perma-stank, and fans of Khalkedonian Death should be well-pleased. I’m incredibly blessed to be able to do what I do here, and the shine of my most recent status change still blinds me sometimes. I want to thank Holdeneye for introducing me to Diabolizer four years ago and for entrusting me to share my thoughts on Murderous Revelations.1 It’s a fantastic death metal album I’m sure to be talking about come year’s end.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320kbps mp3
Labels: Dark Descent Records | Me Saco Un Ojo Records
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: April 11th, 2025

#2025 #40 #Apr25 #CannibalCorpse #DeathMetal #Deicide #Diabolizer #EverlastingSpewRecords #KrisiunUnOjoRecords #MeSacoUnOjoRecords #MurderousRevelations #Nile #Review #TurkishMetal

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

Stuck in the Filter: April 2024’s Angry Misses

By Kenstrosity

The heat persists. Intensifies, even. We’re not even to the dead center of summer, where pavement melts and sinew sloughs off of bones. And yet, we toil. Endless trudges through the slime and grime of sharply angled ducts and beveled sheet metal characterize an average workday for my filtration minions, who do my bidding without question as I sip a piña colada in these run down and ragged headquarters. Alright fine, we don’t have piña coladas here, but a sponge can dream! A sponge can dream…

What was I saying? Oh, right. After many months of constant pep talks and gentle reminders with a cattle prod, my team of hack crack sifters managed a respectable haul from our April buildup. Dive in at your own peril!

Kenstrosity’s Sooty Slab

Exhumation // Master’s Personae [April 26th, 2024 – Pulverised Records]

Indonesian blackened death duo Exhumation never would’ve made it to my queue were it not for our burgeoning Discord server. Rollicking tunes, produced with a charming rawness that tingles my spine, task themselves with the summary destruction of that same spine and waste no time getting started. From the onset of opener “In Death Vortex,” Master’s Personae eviscerates with rabid teeth gnashing through my flesh. Ghoul (guitars) and Bones (vocals) display their respective talents vomiting souls out of their body and concocting sickening infernal riffs with aplomb—and made damn sure their session musicians could do more than just keep up on bass (Sebek), drums (Aldi), and lead guitar (J. Magus). With songs that kick as much ass-tonnage as highlights “Pierce the Abyssheart,” “Chaos Feasting,” “Thine Inmost Curse,” and late bloomer “Mahapralaya,” the only thing that could possibly stand in between you and total metallic indoctrination is the record’s gritty, extra-crunchy production. For some, that might even be its greatest selling point. Either way, Master’s Personae is, at its core, just a nonstop demonic party. Ipso facto, if you like fun, you like this. If you don’t, leave the Hall!

Thus Spoke’s Chucked Choices

Alpha Wolf // Half Living Things [April 5th, 2024 – SharpTone Records]

Aussie gang Alpha Wolf have always had an “angry” sound, but until now, they remained quite firmly smack dab in the middle of modern metalcore. With Half Living Things,1 however, the band move as far as they ever have into beatdown hardcore, albeit, a very glossy, and very metalcore interpretation of it. While many, myself included, think they sound better with a little bit of intrigue, a little bit of mournful melody and atmosphere, there’s no denying that this album does contain several bone-fide bangers. Opening run “Bring Back the Noise,” “Double-Edge Demise,” and “Haunter,” are a groovy set of smacks upside the head, and later cuts “Feign,” and “A Terrible Day for Rain” echo the same menace, safely keeping your head bobbing and your mean face on. The aggression can veer into the realm of cringe at points, not least on single “Sucks 2 Suck,” which includes the wild misstep of a thuggish rap bridge courtesy of ICE-T. But on the other hand, Alpha Wolf do show they have a heart, with surprisingly sadboi “Whenever You’re Ready,” and closer “Ambivalence.” It’s all pretty angsty, but questionable decisions aside, Half Living Things is worth at least the time it takes you to hear one or two of its best tracks. I’ll always be here for a little bit of adolescent ennui anyway.

Sarcasm // Mourninghoul [April 12th, 2024 – Hammerheart Records]

Whilst still a n00b, I reviewed Sarcasm’s previous album, Stellar Stream Obscured, and, to my initial surprise, really rather liked it. It was simply a quirk of circumstance that I didn’t pick up the promo for Mourninghoul. And looking back on that week, I wish I had. This thing is just as fun, just as furious, and once again the perfect balance between odd and straightforwardly blistering. Once again, they lace creepy organs and synthwork into death doom (“Withered Memories of Souls We Mourn,” “No Solace From Above”) to add a little mystique. Once again, they display some brilliant, beautiful, melodic black(ened death) metal riffery to lead refrains (“Lifelike Sleep,” “Dying Embers of Solitude,” “Absence if Reality”), not only soaking the listener in the nostalgia of the golden years of Dissection and Necrophobic, but memorable and moving in their own right. Overall, the album is a little slower and more atmospheric than its predecessor, but in this light perhaps a little more thoughtful. One to check out for anyone who dug Stellar Stream Obscured.

Dear Hollow’s Loudness Lard

Lord Spikeheart // The Adept [April 19th, 2024 – Haekalu Records]

Lord Spikeheart is the alias of Martin Kanja, one-half of grind/noise duo Duma, whose sole self-titled LP was received warmly back in 2020 by the gone-but-unforgotten Roquentin. Now a solo act, Spikeheart fully embraces the manic in his debut full-length The Adept, a fusion of noise, industrial, trap, grind, and hip-hop and tinged with native Kenyan instruments. – guaranteed to scare off unwanted listeners. Featuring a bevy of featured artists, The Adept is as jerky and unpredictable as you might expect from its laundry list of sounds. Including all, but not limited to, Author & Punisher-level of manufactured brutality (“Sham-Ra”), layers of jagged hip-hop a la Skech185 (“Emblem Blem,” “Djangili,” “33rd Degree Access”), and outright metal guitar solos and blastbeats (“Nobody”), as well as outright bananas explosive Igorrr-esque breakcore seizures and Kenyan percussion (“TYVM”) and ominous sprawls of haunting humid ambiance over manic beats (“Rem Fodder,” “Verbose Patmos,” “4AM in the Mara”), and there is little that is predictable about The Adept. Throw on Lord Spikeheart’s incredible charisma, shocking vocals, and evocative primal songwriting, and you’ve got yourself a tastefully insane and impressively uncomfortable slab of experimentation that feels dangerous and unrelenting in the right ways.

Whores. // War. [April 16th, 2024 – The Ghost is Clear Records]

Sometimes you just need a good concussion and drool out your brains to the curb because you got dinged around so much. Atlanta four-piece Whores. will provide mightily in more ways than one. Professing a riff-heavy noise rock/sludge metal combo reminiscent of Chat Pile or Iron Monkey, each of the tracks in War.’s 34-minute runtime is a thick-ass spanker with thick-ass riffs, bad-ass cymbal abuse, and mad-ass yells, and you’d be a fool to miss this broken-tooth abuse. Groove is embedded in the marrow of each bone, and the swill of riffs and noisy leads will get your head bobbing before you can learn how to pronounce opener “Malinches.” From the outright onslaughts of “Imposter Syndrome” and “Sicko,” to the bass builds and guitar squonks of “Quitter’s Fight Song” and “Hostage Therapy” or punky rhythms of “Hieronymous Bosch was Right” and “The Death of a Stuntman,” you don’t need to get all academic to abuse the drywall, and Whores. will set their teeth behind your bruised knuckles. The message is clear: get unga-bunga with riff.

Spit on Your Grave // Arkanum [April 12th, 2024 – Self Release]

You always run a risk when you change up your sound, even slightly. Mexican death metal peddlers Spit on Your Grave are familiar with it. Formerly bringin’ the slamz and gooey brutal shit to your court with unhinged insanity, Arkanum keeps the core sound while incorporating more tempo and nimbleness, making a blazing death metal album with some Behemoth-esque experimentation that keeps the album from falling into gnarly monotony and injects a necessary regality reflected in its art. Subtle plucking motifs grace opener “The Infection” and closer “The March of the Innocents,” chanting and choirs spruce up limper portions of “Into the Devil’s Realm,” and dancy rhythms and melodeath noodling kick up “Broken Hourglass.” In spite of the levels of experimentation, the riff reigns supreme throughout, made most plain in the no-holds-barred death metal assaults of “The Heretic,” “Dark Lullaby,” and “Self Sacrifice.” It’s somewhere between Behemoth’s wicked conjuration of crowns and Hate Eternal’s blazing scorched earth campaign, and while imperfect, Spit on Your Grave’s new direction is tantalizing.

Dolphin Whisperer’s Crossed Up Casting

Nuclear Tomb // Terror Labyrinthian [April 12th, 2024 – Everlasting Spew]

Filthy, frothing, furious, Nuclear Tomb embodies all that fueled the origins of the thrash and death movements, which actively rejected the tonal shift toward “pleasing” that pop-leaning forms of heavy metal were taking at the time. So, yes, it’s unsurprising to hear a punky and driven bass identity reminiscent of the overdriven pummeling of Dan Lilker in Nuclear Assault or Stéphane Picard in Obliveon. But though thrash rings true in the speed-needing assaults of “Fatal Visions” or “Vile Humanity,” death—the gnarled yet precise riffcraft you would heard in an early Pestilence summoning—feeds ugly and foul this acts hefty ambitions. Terror Labyrinthian gives exactly what its name promises: a sense of profound encapsulation and isolation in the density that Nucleur Tomb conjures alongside a sci-fi-informed fear and terror. Its ambition is such that it can fly off the rails a touch when it gets too moody (“Dominance & Persecution”), and its level of discordance can leave tracks feeling like intangible pulps of sick and snarling riffage (“Manufacturing Consent,” “Parasitic”). Despite these minor concerns, Labyrinthian Terror shakes enough to leave a worthy, full-length mark after two promising EPs. And with members of Nuclear Tomb floating around in their small scene with oddball grinders Ixias and the avant-minded Genevieve, it’s all but a promise that what comes next will be weird, frightening, and demanding.

Steel Druhm’s Rancid Requiems to Rotpitting

Engulfed // Unearthly Litanies of Despair [April 19th, 2024 – Me Saco Ojo]

Straight outta Turkey comes the vicious, face-melting death metal assault of Engulfed. Featuring members of Hyperdontia and Diabolizer and bearing hallmarks of both, Engulfed are a nasty savage on a war march to destroy all that lives and breathes. With a highly seasoned lineup and a lethal mission statement, Unearthly Litanies of Despair is a “not fucking around” kind of death platter full of blazing speed, thunderous blasts, and more sub-basement croaks and roars than you’d find in an illegal Balrog mining facility. All the old school legends get sound checked, with plenty of Vader, Morbid Angel, and Incantation-isms to be unearthed, but to my ears, Engulfed sounds most like brother band Diabolizer. That’s certainly not a bad thing, as anyone who heard 2021s Khalkedonian Death will attest. There’s not much subtly on display on Unearthly Litanies, and Engulfed are happy to blast away at Mach 9 for the bulk of the album’s runtime, only slowing down long enough to let slithery riffs do their tentacle things. It isn’t until the closing stanza “Occult Incantations” that they opt to get down and doomy, and though it runs way long at nearly 8 minutes, it digs up some nicely dark, gloomy textures. All in all a brutal trip to the belly of the beast feaster!

Coffin Curse // The Continuous Nothing [April 22nd, 2024 – Memento Mori]

The sophomore offering from Chile’s Coffin Curse is 100% military grade old school death with enough rot and pus to win over any genre fancier. The Continuous Nothing is really a continuous something, and that something is gnarly, thrashing death goodness in the varicose vein of Autopsy with some Deicide and Morbid Angel in the gore batter. There’s absolutely nothing new here, but the enthusiasm with which Coffin Curse comes at the classic death style is refreshing and invigorating. You’ll be smiling early into opener “Thin the Herd” due to its oh-so-righteous blend of Autopsy and vintage Morbid Angel, and it’s tough to blast “Bacchanal of the Mortal” and not want to throw your BarcaLounger out the fucking window. This is meat n’ tatters gutter death that could have come out in the late 80s or early 90s, but that doesn’t lessen its vitality and impact since these cats know how to write a ripping tune. I’m especially enamored with the disgusting vocals of Max Neira who gives even the hideous Chris Reifert a run for his scuzz-vomit money. This thing is just good, gross fun!

Tombstoner // Rot Stink Rip [April 26th, 2024 – Redefining Darkness]

Staten Island-based death thugs Tombstoner came back to kill with second album Rot Stink Rip, showcasing a whole lotta New York attitude. With a sound mixing mouth-breathing caveman brutality with New York hardcore undertones, the menu items all come with brass knuckles and steel-toed boots to your fat face (no substitutions!). This is street-level tough guy death with a Biohazard/Pantera-level IQ and anything remotely intellectual is tossed in the dumpster like a carpet-wrapped corpse. Songs like “Sealed in Blood” will rot your brain stem as it curb stomps your skull, and the beefy death grooves are ugly, stupid, and dangerous. Internal Bleeding-isms rebound off Skinless idioms amid the brainless forward momentum of the title track, and the groove-busting, barroom-bullying nastiness of primal cuts like “Metamorphosis” and “Reduced to Hate” are made for Roids Appreciation Day at Planet Meathead. The riffs are hella weighty and the overall approach is lead pipe brutality. Don’t bother spinning this if you’re one of those fancy-dancy tech types. This one is strictly for the gashouse gorillas and pimpanzees.

Saunders’ Slimy Selections

Satanic North // Satanic North [April 19th, 2024 – Reaper Entertainment]

Featuring members of Ensiferum, Finnish black metal troupe Satanic North ripped out a seething slab of old school black metal on their self-titled debut. Although the album seemed to drop with minimal fanfare or notice, having been clued into its existence, Satanic North has since provided a helluva fun time. Satanic North pull no punches and dispense with flash or bombast, adding modern beef to an endearingly old school formula that stomps hard. Harnessing the raw, punky, Venom-esque attitude of ’80s black metal, along with distinctive second-wave elements, and dashes of Darkthrone and Goatwhore, Satanic North is a varied, aggressive and utterly addictive opus. Regardless of the mode of destruction the band chooses at any given time, the songwriting quality generally maintains the rage. Grim, icy atmospheres envelope blasting, viciously executed songs, loaded with a bevy of badass riffs and pissed-off attitude. The relentless, hammering blows on opener “War,” sit comfortably alongside the crawling, sinister melodies and infectious hooks of “Village,” while expert pacing and builds highlight epic later album gem, “Kohti Kuolemaa.” Satanic North throw down some awesomely thrashy barnburners for good measure on powerhouse nuggets of black gold in the shape of “Wolf” and closer “Satanic North.” One of 2024’s underrated gems.

Iron Monkey // Spleen & Goad [April 5th, 2024 – Relapse Records]

UK veterans Iron Monkey’s 1998 opus Our Problem is a sludge classic that I’ve held in high regard for many years. Sadly, the untimely death of raw-throated vocalist Johnny Morrow, a distinctive, glass-gurgling beast behind the mic, saw the band dissolve, until reforming and crafting a solid comeback with 2017’s 9-13. Stripped own to a trio in their second coming, with long-serving guitarist Jim Rushby doing an admirable job taking over the vocal slot, Iron Monkey sound as though the piss, vinegar, and hatred still flows in their veins. Spleen & Goad offers few surprises, continuing the trend of its predecessor while maintaining the signature Iron Monkey sound. And although Iron Monkey cannot quite match the esteemed heights of their early days, this modern, well-trodden incarnation of the band still bludgeons, grooves and seethes with sledgehammer force and infectiously diseased riffs. Channeling the bluesy Sabbathian meets NOLA mode of sludge, with a side of Grief, and a shit ton of spite, the Iron Monkey lads deliver the goods again. Noisy, feedback-drenched bruisers rule the day; as swaggering, drunken grooves, surly riffs, and feral vocals drive this unhinged hate machine. Spleen & Goad is victim to some creeping bloat, however overall, it’s a stellar return and addition to their storied catalog, as rugged, bludgeoning cuts like “Misanthropizer,” “Concrete Shock,” “Rat Flag” and “Lead Transfusion” attests.

Mystikus Hugebeard’s Filthy Finding

Diabolic Oath // Oracular Hexations [April 5th, 2024 – Sentient Ruin Laboratories]

Oracular Hexations is a blast. It is a chaotic, colossally dense album of what can ostensibly be called blackened death metal, but the music is just so fucking filthy it might as well be sludge. The fun thing here is that the guitar and bass are completely fretless; the riffs aren’t hard to parse but the guitars feel almost slippery. It allows the brutal riffage of a heavy track like “Serpent Coils Suffocating the Mortal Wound” to become borderline hallucinogenic, while still hitting like a truck. The slower, oozing riffs of “Rusted Madness Tethering Misbegotten Haruspices” and “Winged Ouroboros Mutating Unto Gold” have a real viscosity to them that always reminds me of the stoner doom stylings of Conan. This album is definitely a lot, but it’s an extremely satisfying listen. The fretless imprecision paired with the music’s intensity, the delightfully disgusting guitar tone, and the vocalist’s tectonic gurgles all give Oracular Hexations a ritualistic atmosphere so thick you can practically sink into it. There’s plenty one could say about the musicianship—the drummer deserves praise for his diverse, technical performance—but trying to dial in on any one ingredient is like trying to appreciate the subtle flavor undertones of sheep stomach in a plate of haggis. Just cram the whole thing in at once, man, because this is the kind of sensory brutalization that you’ve gotta just let happen to you.

Iceberg’s Singular Surfacing

Venomous Echoes // Split Formations and Infinite Mania [April 05, 2024 – I, Voidhanger Records]

Extreme metal’s penchant for horror and destruction never ceases to amaze me. It doesn’t matter how I came across Venomous Echoes second album Split Formations and Infinite Mania, one look at that album cover and the curtain rise of squelching music within had me transfixed. Brutal Floridian death metal meets the dissonant disintegration of Portal meets the crushing weight of funeral doom and they all come together in the unrated cut of a Cronenberg flick. One-man-band Benjamin Vanweelden takes the listener inside his own personal hell as he wrestles with body dysmorphia, making for an experience not unlike recent cuts by An Isolated Mind or The Reticent. This is challenging, highly uncomfortable music, abandoning pitch and rhythm at will, bending and twisting notes and smothering the listener with oppressive atmosphere. From the sickening stomping sound effects of opener “Ocular Maltosis ov Schizophrenia” to the ultra-dissonant ostinato and DSBM wailing of closer “Split Formations and Infinite Mania,” this album is the definition of the car crash you can’t look away from. Far outside any zone of comfort is exactly where Vanweelden wants his listeners, and I have to say this makes for a sickly impressive, revolting, yet mesmerizing experience.

#AlphaWolf #AmericanMetal #AnIsolatedMind #Arkanum #AustralianMetal #AuthorPunisher #AuthorAndPunisher #Autopsy #Behemoth #Biohazard #BlackMetal #BlackSabbath #BlackenedDeathMetal #BrutalDeathMetal #ChatPile #ChileanMetal #CoffinCurse #Darkthrone #DeathMetal #Deicide #DiabolicOath #Diabolizer #Dissection #Duma #Engulfed #Ensiferum #EverlastingSpewRecords #Exhumation #FinnishMetal #FuneralDoom #Genevieve #Goatwhore #Grief #Grind #Grindcore #HaekaluRecords #HalfLivingThings #HammerheartRecords #Hardcore #HipHop #Hyperdontia #IVoidhangerRecords #Igorrr #Incantation #IndonesianMetal #Industrial #InternalBleeding #IronMonkey #Ixias #KenyanMetal #LordSpikeheart #MasterSPersonae #MeSacoUnOjoRecords #MelodicBlackMetal #MelodicDeathMetal #MementoMoriRecords #Metalcore #MexicanMetal #MorbidAngel #Mourninghoul #Necrophobic #Noise #NuclearAssault #NuclearTomb #Obliveon #OracularHexations #Pantera #Pestilence #Portal #PulverisedRecords #RawBlackMetal #ReaperEntertainment #RedefiningDarknessRecords #RelapseRecords #Review #Reviews #RotStinkRip #Sarcasm #SatanicNorth #SelfRelease #SharpToneRecords #Skech185 #Skinless #Slam #Sludge #SludgeMetal #SpitOnYourGrave #SpleenGoad #SplitFormationsAndInfiniteMania #StuckInTheFilter #SwedishMetal #TerrorLabyrinthian #TheAdept #TheContinuousNothing #TheGhostIsClearRecords #TheReticent #ThrashMetal #Tombstoner #Trap #TurkishMetal #UKMetal #UnearthlyLitaniesOfDespair #Vader #Venom #VenomousEchoes #War #Whores_

Mortal Wound – Anus of the World Review

By Steel Druhm

The Vietnam War era was a grim chapter in United States history. The wildly unpopular conflict was fought with questionable ideological justifications in a half-hearted manner, dictated by murky political considerations instead of a desire to achieve real victory. In the end, nothing good came from it and the horrors of the war’s excesses left a stain on the nation. This bleak, bloody conflagration has become potent fodder for nihilistic films and literature, and it makes sense that it serves as the backdrop for the full-length debut by Los Angeles death metal mob Mortal Wound. Anus of the World is a nasty, odorous slab of groove-heavy OSDM molded from the same brutal thuggery as Sanguisugabogg and the rawest moments of Cannibal Corpse, and this gore-splattered opus is not a place one should venture in search of subtly and nuance. This is a repellant album about a macabre time and the band do their best to immerse you in the blood and terror of it all. Is this something you want to sign up for? Let’s see what you’re made of, maggot!

The album is littered with soundbites from Vietnam-themed films like Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket, and the album wastes no time dunking you in a blood-soaked rice paddy on opener “Found Dead in a Bush.” Their style is direct, rudimentary, and heavy as fuck, taking a sledgehammer to your sensibilities with super thick death grooves, utterly unintelligible garbage disposal vocals, and relentlessly pounding drums. It’s the kind of song that pummels you and leaves you feeling like you need a long shower at a disinfecting clinic. “Tunnel Rat” swings close to Barnes-era Cannibal Corpse with corkscrewing riffs and stop-start tempo shifts and it shakes you up. The band’s low-tech Neanderthal style works well on these cuts and especially on the ode to napalm, “Engulfed in Liquid Hellfire” where they sprinkle bits of early days Death-styled guitar work into the mix in between ruining your face with fat grooves. “Spirit of the Bayonet” is a standout due to its strong Bolt Thrower / Just Before Dawn influence and the relentlessly advancing riffs that feel like a tank division you can’t hold back.

But when you base your whole battle plan around rudimentary, muddy mayhem, things must be tight and error-free, and some of Mortal Wound’s efforts miss those marks. “Drug Filled Cadaver” is too simplistic and one note, plodding along too long, and “Born Again Hard” is a good death tune run into the dirt by excessive padding, crawling on a good 2 minutes more than it should. Bloat infects several tracks, doing varying degrees of damage, and some songs sound like they get abruptly cut off. I like what they’re selling and want to buy it in bulk, but I still need the individual tracks to hit hard and fast, and the band needs to learn when to fall back. This is a shame, as the 43-plus minute runtime is entirely reasonable and feels just about right. I give them top marks on the use of the movie soundbites though. Sometimes the prevalence of film snippets can be distracting or irritating, but they’re used very effectively here. Especially the way they end this grim-ass album on a futile note.

Sam Shriver (Lake of Blood) and Peter King (Teeth, Lake of Blood) drop the groove hammer like Agent Orange with one ginormous riff-cascade after another. Their playing isn’t techy or proggy in the least with the focus on assault and battery, and for the most part, the plan works. Sam also provides vocals, and goddamn, they are nasty and sick. He’s totally unintelligible and operating from the sub-sub-basement, but he fits the theme and music perfectly. This isn’t a band that will light up your synapses with creative twists and turns, but they do their chosen lead pipe brutality quite well. If they could trim their material down a touch and focus on hit-and-run raiding, they’d carpet bomb the death metal map.

Anus of the World is a very dark, primal slog through a horrific period of history, and by forgoing melancholy for savagery, Mortal Wound effectively captures the senselessness and insanity that ruled the day. It has enough shortcomings to keep it from hitting that next level, but the good stuff is quite impactful and the atmosphere is spot on. Anus inspired me to go watch Apocalypse Now Redux, which is clearly a major time commitment,1 so they did something right here. I’m excited for whatever comes next from Mortal Wound as they have a recipe for disaster that I enjoy. Maybe next time there will be less anus bloat. The horror… the horror…

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Dark Descent and Me Saco Un Ojo
Websites: mortalwound.bandcamp.com | instagram.com/mortalwound_death
Releases Worldwide: May 24th, 2024

#2024 #30 #AmericanMetal #AnusOfTheWorld #BoltThrower #CannibalCorpse #DarkDescentRecords #DeathMetal #JustBeforeDawn #May24 #MeSacoUnOjoRecords #MortalWound #Review #Reviews #Sanguisugabogg