Gaze upon the sleeve for Chaotian’s ‘Festering Excarnation’ and, in the bottom left-hand corner you will note a beleaguered ghoul apparently either formed of or devolving into sludge. There is something – perhaps its humped back or sloppy mouth, or maybe the pinprick eyes that suggest a horrified awareness of the shit that it has gotten itself into – that I find deeply relatable here, particularly after slogging through the six tracks here several times in a row. Combining two demos (2018’s ‘Where Gods Excarnate’ and the somehow rawer and more primitive ‘Festering Carcinolith’ from 2019) this release coughs up some seriously ugly death metal that’s big on lumpy, sloppy riffs and concepts that seem to concern vast, quivering flesh-mounds. It is, in a word, horrifying – a perfect cesspit in which to writhe if this bullshit year is proving too much and you find yourself clinging to the putrid likes of Immolation, Autopsy and Undergang for strange, unnatural solace.
