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CAUSTIC PHLEGM
Purulent Apocalypse

Hells Headbangers (2025)
Rating: 8.5/10

What a god awful gooey din this brain grinder makes, and yet with such clean, perverse melody beneath the layers of scum. Clearly inspired by the dregs of Carcass and other borderline grindcore slop, this vile debut is the brainchild of Chestcrush creator Evangelos Vasilakos, born in Greece but now residing in merry mulchy Scotland.

With its garishly fetid cover art, the music here is slime-coated and bereft of hygiene as ‘Cadaveric Spasms & Purge Fluid Showers’ opens up the sewer flood gates and oozes a thickening current of gore. Much of this is delivered as squalid hammering; the clank of a steel drum echoing down some diseased alleyway writhing with gunk. However, there is musical clarity among the sleaze. Vasilakos doesn’t merely regurgitate last night’s dinner with the instrumentation, instead there are filthy yet conniving melodies to savour; rank yet crisp tumult coated with fetid discharge.

‘The Teratophilist’ begins with a weird effect that transports me back to the days of wonky VHS trailers, and then the growling, pummeling riffage starts up like a murderous tractor that was too demented to get a part in Stephen King’s 1986 movie Maximum Overdrive! Eventually, the track kicks into a gallop layered with grisly vocals and given further punch by the dustbin lid to the head drums. ‘Flesh Melt Contagion’ continues with muck shovelling, spreading its cancerous clamour on a series of dank dismal thuds coupled with serrated riff work.

Considering the dollops of gore spread over this, the guitars are well defined and hooky with which ever pace they choose to operate. Some of the riffs aren’t too far removed from Swedish designs, again I refer to the structure of ‘Flesh Melt Contagion’ which is also notable for the utterly ghastly vocals.

Elsewhere, ‘Soft Bones’ stands out like an oozing wound; the track rumbles with festering aplomb and there’s a real groove going on here. Meanwhile, ‘Blister Bliss’ boasts both pace and pus-laden doominess, gurgling like some clogged lavatory about to cough up its innards of excrement.

I love the way that a lot of the songs begin with a kind of cosmic film score, taking me back to the 80s low-budget sci-fi horror themes. Couple these vintage qualities with the bubbling squabble of the title track and you have a perfect finale to what is easily one of the best death metal albums of the year so far.

Neil Arnold

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