Thought ‘Purulent Manifestations’ was solid and that Teratoma were plenty decent when I caught them live, but neither of those prior encounters experience prepared me for this.
After the inevitable spooky intro the band get down to it, and it’s like spelunking into a pit of raw sewage: before you know it you’re up to your eyebrows in muck and having it invade your entire olfactory system. The riffs are dense and wormy but lunge with a sense of strong melodic purpose, balancing catchiness with the need to crush more deftly than you’d imagine such filth-encrusted, lobster-clawed beings were capable of. The rumbling, ever-onward-toward-the-pit pace is balanced out by slugabed doom-outs and what the singer-thing might lack in Pavarotti-esque range he certainly makes up for with vile gusto and a sense that, at any given moment, he may well projectile vomit his own squalid bowels. Temporary respite comes in the shape of ‘Interim’ (acoustic guitar, panpipes, etc.) before ‘Festering Realm’ drags us bodily back down into the band’s, uhh, festering realm for another bout of oozing, glurping horror that’s equal parts Demlich, Autopsy and Bolt Thrower. All in all its immensely satisfying stuff – just be sure to mop yourself down with a litre or so of Toilet Duck after each listen.