Yersinia Pestis – Putrefactio

Yersinia Pestis’s debut full-length ‘Putrefactio’ is a visceral plunge into shadowed rituals, a Spanish underground Black Metal journey cloaked in archaic Latin verse.

From the opening tremolo of ‘Adonias Cogitationis’, the album exudes an austere grandeur, guitars slicing through a dense fog of bass and percussion that feels both cavernous and claustrophobic.

The production strikes a compelling balance: raw enough to retain that DIY Iberian Lodge edge, yet clear enough to let the mournful melodies and guttural roars cut through with surgical precision.

Vocals are chaotic, semi-religious and enchanting, conjuring the dread of the Black Death pandemic. After all – Yersinia Pestis is a gram-negative bacterium transmitted to humans by fleas, responsible for three forms of plague and which caused the “Black Death”, the deadliest pandemic in recorded history.

Lyrically, ‘Putrefactio’ taps into themes of decay and spiritual transmutation, the Latin phrasing lending each track an almost liturgical weight. On ‘Hu-Niis Fragilitas Entis’, the interplay between crystalline lead lines and subterranean drums conjures a rite of passage, while ‘Somnia Mortis-Insanis Somnia’ channels hallucinatory dread through its spiraling riffs and whispered incantations. The contributions from members of Empty, Cantos De Muerte, Ataraxy, Black Spirit, and Cryptic Wanderings only deepen the album’s sense of collective ceremony, every guest turn woven seamlessly into the larger tapestry.

By the time ‘Extremum Spiritum Testam Inamem’ fades into a final, spectral echo, Putrefactio has left its mark: a study in ritual decay that feels both rooted in early Scandinavian traditions and reborn through an Iberian lens. It’s a bold, thoughtful debut that stakes Yersinia Pestis as one of the most intriguing voices in underground Black Metal today.

Formed in 2006, and after several demos and splits,  ‘Putrefactio’, this is their debut album. It offers a clear allegory of our current times, full of meanness, fragility and the mockery of decadent society we live in. An absolute ode to death and the insignificance of the human being, but not from a romantic prism. Oh no.