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CHESTCRUSH
ΨΥΧΟΒΓΑΛΤΗΣ

Self-released (2025)
Rating: 8.5/10

The man responsible for the recent and brilliant Caustic Phlegm opus (Purulent Apocalypse) is the same nut job behind Chestcrush. His name is Evangelos Vasilakos and he seems a pleasant fellow, but the music he puts out alongside his band mates exists to quite literally slime, or in the case of Chestcrush, suffocate the soul.

With a toxic mix of death, black and sludge that coats your lungs like waxy soot, this sophomore slab – whose title, ΨΥΧΟΒΓΑΛΤΗΣ, translates as “soul extractor” from Greek – certainly lives up to its title. The only saving grace from the ugly onslaught on display is that the runtime is only 41 minutes, but if you can survive past the first song then you’re a hardened soul.

If you thought the recent Teitanblood hailstorm (From The Visceral Abyss) was a harsh experience then you might just want to tiptoe around the edges of this misanthropic cesspool. There’s no fun to be had here, just oppressive gushes of thick silt which stamp out the light. ‘Underneath This Rotten Soil Bodies Are Still Bleeding’ is a reasonably apt title for such a horrible opening track; somehow sluggish even with muddy flurries the song cascades like crumbling coal, filling the mines and taking breath in equal measure.

Sodden with evil, ‘Underneath This Rotten Soil Bodies Are Still Bleeding’ churns like an abysmal tundra, channelled through the blackened hail of ‘Every Single Word That Comes Out Of Your Filthy Hole Is An Infectious Lie A Spreading Disease’ with its absolutely punishing skin work, and then the sledgehammer that is ‘We Shall Be Devoured By The Offspring Of Our Own Flesh’; grim layers of reverberating doom propelled by an inner plague and plateau of ghastly sludgy death metal.

Some of the track titles may seem laughably long, but once you’ve been dragged head first into Chestcrush’s writhing world there’s no escape from such devastation. The languid sludge of ‘Existence Is Punishment’, the miasmic fetid storm of ‘Hang Them! Torch Them!’ and the seven minute closing juggernaut ‘As The Damned Writhe In Eternal Woe’, this is an album that is happy to alienate all in its quest for seething hatred.

To put it as simple as possible, Chestcrush is the immovable object that kills anyone who even dares to glimpse its vile workings, and the men behind such a colossal slab should be given solitary confinement for constructing such a hateful dirge.

Neil Arnold

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