There aren’t many art forms where something disgusting and disturbing can be a good thing and a selling point. Horror movies fall into this category quite obviously because the bloodier and more nauseating the visuals and story, the better. It’s the same thing for death metal where the closer you come to puking your guts’ contents, the better chance you have to succeed.
While they’re only two EPs into their run, New Orleans bashers Congealed Putrescence have a stranglehold on creating music that is foul, morbidly offensive, and unforgivably brutal. Their latest EP is “Within the Ceaseless Murk,” a four-track, 12-minute stomach wrencher that requires little of your time but all of your damaged psyche. The band—vocalist/bassist Steven Hendricks, guitarists Ian Hennessey and Matthew Moorin, drummer Alex Babineaux—piles enough carnage and tyranny into this release to give you an appetizer of what they do so well but also leave you with a little hunger left over, the intestines-churning torment you just suffered aside.
“Advection” opens with the drums rupturing muscles and sludgy death becoming a major factor, the growls crushing your bones. Guitars swelter and deliver a southern swagger, pummeling and destroying, spiraling out in menace. “Gelid Fathomless Suffering” brings twisted riffs and drums leaving blood splashing on pavement, the shrieks peeling paint from the walls. Guitars fire up anew as the bass brings rubbery dexterity, and then fire erupts, the playing hitting dangerous levels of intensity before finally giving way to solace. “Suffocating Brain” punishes right away with the guitars generating oppressive heat, and the growls gnawing into your nervous system. The playing steams and gives off attitude, flooding over and creating molten thrashing that drives everything into the earth. Closer “Burning Off” arrives with warping riffs and vile howls as the playing tramples everything in its path. A thick bassline acts like a steel spinal cord, the soloing melts, the burly thrashing slams home the final nails.
You need a little less than 12 minutes to take on “Within the Ceaseless Murk,” but doing so will be a total test of your strength as Congealed Putrescence throw a lot at you in just four songs. Pain and suffering combine with death and torment to make a formidable unit capable of destroying psyches, and just one trip will leave you with bruising both physical and mental. I can only imagine the damage they’ll do with a proper full-length.
For more on the band, go here: https://congealedputrescence.bandcamp.com/
To buy the album, go here: https://caligarirecords.storenvy.com/products/36256753-congealed-putrescence-within-the-ceaseless-murk-cal-195
For more on the label, go here: http://www.caligarirecords.com/
Meat Mead Metal 