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CRYPTWORM
Oozing Radioactive Vomition

Me Saco Un Ojo / Pulverised / Extremely Rotten (2023)
Rating: 7/10

If there is one album you want to end 2023 with then make sure it’s Oozing Radioactive Vomition, if only to rid the season of festive joy and replace it with sewage. Bristol, England-based death metallers Cryptworm are back bubbling from a quagmire of cosmic slop, where the guys have once again delved deep into the fetid depths of their inner psyche to churn out another sickening heap… only this time it’s even smellier! There is a new addition to the stench in the form of drummer Jamie Wintle, who joins Tibor Hanyi (vocals / guitar) and fellow zombified gore geek Joss Farrington (bass).

Although the album seems a tad rushed don’t be put off by the trim 35 minutes of mouldy music. Every time I’ve slapped this lump of fetid bile on the turntable it has felt way longer, and maybe that’s the main issue I have with the outing. Each of the six songs feels too flabby, as if several pounds of congealed fat could have been carved and two extra tracks added. This is, however, my only quibble with what is otherwise a stinking cesspit of goofy n’ gory death metal that at times shifts into slam territory.

The cover art provides a perfect insight as to how musty and murky those riffs are, while the bubbling, festering bog geysers are those trickling bass lines. The drums have the desired affect too, evoking images of a sodden and forlorn Sasquatch traipsing through the algae-ridden bayou. You know also that the riffs cast off spores of black mould and that the puking vocals sound like a victim to such toxic, lung-eroding exposure.

It’s only right then that the audience should be reaching for the barf bags while chomping on popcorn because Oozing Radioactive Vomition is that crusty b-movie drive-in trash you’re always seeking, a primordial soup of splatter and gloop that presents itself as six bloated corpses that leak, fester and seep to the soundtrack of their own gaseous emissions.

The opening title track slithers in like a dismembered corpse extracted from a gunk pool; its gelatinous, bulbous form a steaming pile of excreted slurry mashed through a sieve of gurgling vocal mulch and septic riff grimness. The band rarely changes its pace or theme except maybe from some extra fills from Wintle. The creepy trio regularly comes across like some gross offspring of Carcass and Demilich, but that’s no bad thing in the great, gory scheme of things.

‘Necrophagous (Postmortal Devourment)’ is groove-based and even punky at times, except that every slip n’ slide is coated in cadaver crust and ghoul grease. It’s a shame that some of the punkier flurries aren’t introduced more, but in my opinion it seems that Cryptworm is desperate to remain so squalid and filthy to the point of repressing into its own back passage of pus. ‘Organ Snatcher’ is another prime example of how Cryptworm overstays its welcome, initially upbeat and providing the same silly Technicolor terror as a b-movie, but then drags itself like a shabby mutt with worms. The Demilich vibes continue throughout this record and Hanyi seems quite content with his basement dwelling.

Even with every eerily discharged splat of aqueous sewage, Cryptworm’s much anticipated new thud of crud seems laborious and stagnant. Of course, I giggled along with glee for its duration, but then again I did the same with countless 80s video nasties and where are they now? Yep, collecting dust in the attic.

Neil Arnold

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