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MUCOUS
Resplendent Ooze EP

Self-released (2022)
Rating: 8.5/10

And here we go again with more repugnant US death metal that drips congealing waste from every groove and sloppy vocal smear. This Pennsylvanian trio plumbs the depths of grisly doom to dredge up then vomits out a reeking mass of drudgery and organic filth.

The song titles – ‘Drowned In The Muck’, ‘Cannibal Psychosis’, ‘Accidental Self-Mutilation With A Mallet’ and ‘Stinking Hell’ – on this four-track EP sum up this putrid expression, although any sense of truly sinister seriousness is surely discarded with the ‘Accidental Self-Mutilation With A Mallet’ track title!

Even so, this is murky, abysmal squelching death metal whereby even the faster segments cannot blow away the stiff cobwebs of gloom. Opening track ‘Drowned In The Muck’ features some incredible catchiness, chugging with brutality but wondrously bogged down by its own instrumental discharge.

Resplendent Ooze is just a squalid, unhygienic EP that reveals putrid stench after putrid stench, a bit like wading through a swamp that’s been undisturbed for centuries only to succumb to the cloying algae, the thick, gloopy mud and eventual death by swallowing silt which envelopes the lungs.

This record can be placed in the damp camp occupied by Cerebral Rot, Sequestrum and the weirder Wharflurch. It’s staggeringly wretched, bile-soaked and fronted by a snot-swilling, blood-gurgling vocalist who bellows through his own throaty film of mucous before gobbing out rancid spits of dismal putrefaction.

The EP only runs for 15 minutes but in that time you feel as if you’ve been dipped then dragged through a miry soup of entrails, excrement and sick before being shredded to a pulp by those churning riffs of bleak coatings. The guys certainly got their band moniker and EP name correct, because this thing sucks you down into its sploshing depths and spits out your bones.

Neil Arnold

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