The blazing hot summer is a strange time for death metal for me. I absolutely listen to it the entire three-month span, but it’s a time when my head isn’t always in the right place for all new releases. This summer has been different, and maybe it’s my frame of mind, but it feels like it’s all hitting when everything feels miserable.

Swedish death squad Filth arrive with their debut album “Time to Rot,” and that’s fitting as there are a lot of elements of our world that could stand to decay forever. This is grinding, slowly dealt death that hits you right in the chest and is ideally proportioned. At six tracks and 29 minutes, the band—vocalist/drummer Per, guitarist/bassist Sebastian, guitarist Ismael—gives you just enough to fill your rotting guts and leave you wanting more. That’s incredibly welcome. I’m sure they could have tacked on another two or three tracks, but this hits harder as is. It’s smoldering and dark, and nasty, and it demands replay, which its running time makes easy to do. Repeatedly.

“Odious Obsession” bristles with industrial-style noise, paving the way for filthy death, a crushing tempo, and growls that serve menace. The band hammers hard, proving to be a massive force with snarling riffs and a mighty power surge. The title track has weird echo out front, then furnace-like heat immediately greeting you, growls engorging as the guitars come to a boil. The playing rips ever harder, stampeding over unsuspecting victims, barreling into endless mud pits and charring your senses along the way. “Flesh Dress” initially delivers strange racket, and then gruff guitars begin to mash, growls choking on noxious fumes, the tempo absolutely unloading. Guitars spit fire before settling back a bit, and then the attack is mounted anew, surging to a devastating finish.

“Live in Agony Die in Pain” spills boiling lava, the guitars cutting through fiery tributaries, the growls burying all hope beneath the flames. There’s a section of hypnosis that sets the stage for doomy, sooty punishment that is doled out generously, an attack taking calculated turns, everything ending in blinding carnage. “Decrepit Womb” starts clean, hinting at some calm, but it’s devoured by doomy death and howls that smother, the savagery continuing to find new levels of pain. Monstrous chaos bleeds into the picture, growls strangling, the final moments coming at you suddenly and violently. Closer “Emaciated” has guitars encircling and then unloading, ugly growls crawling down your back, skull-dragging madness dragging cinders across your face. Guitars layer as doomy frost begins to accumulate, the power haunting and bringing a freezing finish.

“Time to Rot” is an effective, economical serving of classic death metal with a little bit of doom burned around the edges for taste, and Filth have a great launching-off point for diving deeper into the void. This is properly brutal and doesn’t overstay its welcome which, trust me, is incredibly refreshing among the sea of over-bloated records. This album gets in, crushes your will to live, and fades before you really know what hit you. 

For more on the band, go here: https://filthdeath.bandcamp.com/

To buy the album, go here: https://www.mesacounojo.com/shop/filth-time-to-rot-lp/

Or here: https://www.rottedlife.com/rotted-life-releases

For more on the label, go here: https://www.mesacounojo.com/

And here: https://www.rottedlife.com/