Pustulant Flesh from Copenhagen present their new album ‘Gargling Pustulence’ which I’ve been playing over and over since I got my hands on it. Imagine the chunkiness of Incantation or Convulse mixed with the gristle and grime of Dead Infection with a more overdriven bass tone that cuts through the guitars and adds a powerful component to the storm of steel. They’ve noticeably grown since their ‘Beyond Lobotomy’ EP a few years ago which I thought was a good start for them and had some crazy evil vocals on there. The music makes me feel envision a dark ritual summoning a creature in the depths of a sewer and the creature goes on a rampage, tearing apart and consuming the cultists.
At a digestible 20 minute length this is short but sickly sweet like the rotting corpse of a dwarf yet feels longer due to the strength of the writing here. All instruments are loud as fuck and just as heavy sounding. The guitar work is chunkier than a cannibal’s cauldron of stew and the riffs are badass and dark. Downtuned like the strings are about to fall right off.
Rhythm-wise the bass rattles with a jagged pulsation and the drums are getting beat up. The drums have quite a bit of finesse to them despite the abuse they take here – plenty of flourishes and nice touches and they have this “falling down a flight of stairs in the dark while drunk” chaotic quality to them that really does the job for me. Vocals are mostly low and brutal growls like a wounded animal in a dark basement, with occasionally some wet and phlegmy variations of higher pitched dry and raspy “Ahhhhhhh” style is used and that sounds like it’s being emitted from a tomb. The musicians here are all holding their own corners down, it’s a strong lineup working through tightly written and potent arrangements.
I love the track ‘March of the Ravenous Dead’ just some good old-school sounding Death Metal nastiness and it made a good lead track to release ahead of the rest of the album and represents the sound displayed here well. I’d also like to shout out to the title track closer as well which is slimy Death/Doom dungeon crawling at it’s finest. It feels like trying to swim thru a castle corridor filled with blood and just has such a thick atmosphere to it.
There are some samples from post-mortem medical examinations which are suitably gross and sound like something off a General Surgery album. This is Deathgrind where ratio of components is about 65% foul “BBQ” Death Metal and 35% Goregrind / Grind influence. Theres a few slower sections but they fluctuate between a slower mid-paced and an actual breakdown for the most part, theres no slams or excessive breakdown spamming here. The guitars have a love for using squeals like a sort of evil Zakk Wylde if he chose to play better music.
Filthy tones all over the place, audible but not crystal clean production that serves the music with the chunkiness, wet crunching samples, basically a wet pile of gore in audio form – what’s not to love here? They even do an homage type song to Napalm Death’s ‘You Suffer’. Keep these Danes on your radar metal enjoyers, they are on to something.
