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CORPUS OFFAL
Corpus Offal

20 Buck Spin (2025)
Rating: 7.5/10

Finally laying the ghost of Cerebral Rot to rest, former members Ian Schwab (vocals and guitar) and Clyle Lindstrom (guitar) alongside Jason Sachs (bass, ex-Demoncy) and Jesse Shreibman (drums, Bell Witch / Autophagy) embark on the debut full-length Corpus Offal album.

For those of you who heard last year’s two-track introductory demo from the Austin, Texas-based band then you’ll be familiar with the songs ‘Ripened Psychosis’ and ‘Gorging Gastric Decedent’; both chunky eye-gouging slabs accompanied here by another four meaty slabs. Sure, there are only six tracks and a brief intro entitled ‘Purging Creation’, but every song here runs for over six minutes; closing track ‘Secreted Effluence (Spilling)’ is a whopping 12 minutes!

It’s quite a hefty debut at 50 minutes, oozing into the system via ‘Spinous Forms Of Mortal Abhorrence’, a grisly encounter that lasts almost eight minutes, embedding itself into your skull like a blood-caked and muddy meat cleaver. The key to the operation of this horror show is the riffs; massive bulky manifestations of slime derived partly from Demilich or Morbid Angel.

Deep within the mulch there is a blustery nature as stark chords meander through the claustrophobic air, Corpus Offal creating an atmosphere akin to being trapped in a coffin as the dismal thud of distant drums echo above ground. Even so, the soil encasing the coffin isn’t as boggy and soggy as that created by Cerebral Rot. Instead, there is more clarity to each groove in spite of the vocals delivered as a gurgled wave of thick phlegm. ‘Essence Of Dissolution’ grinds and gushes like a torrent of lumpy gunk splattered with a Carcass-styled bludgeoning via the pulverising drums.

At its lowest and slowest the album can’t help but resort to those fetid Cerebral Rot festerings. ‘Gorging Gastric Decedent’ is coughed up like grotty grind, initially blasting at pace before levelling out as a groove based slop bucket. Meanwhile, namesake song ‘Corpus Offal’ begins as a series of skull hammers, splattering shards of brain and bone over the walls due to the vile bass and percussive frenzy. There’s a frantic stirring of miasmic soup here as the combo invites the listener to wade through slurry, reflected also in that mammoth closer ‘Secreted Effluence (Spilling)’ boasting foul fungal air and fully equipped with a filthy mid-paced drudgery.

There are no real quibbles from me here, it’s the churning abyss of pustilence I anticipated but it is rather formulaic at times, and far less horrid than Cerebral Rot. Death metal fans will still lap this up and for the most part so did I.

Neil Arnold

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