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DESECRATION
Cemetery Sickness

Metal Age Productions (2014)
Rating: 8/10

One thing is for certain about these Welsh lunatics; this unbalanced trio are the only band to have a song title called ‘Cunt Full Of Maggots’. But hey, such a title is the norm’ for Desecration – these disturbed death metallers have been vomiting out this sort of stuff since the early 90s.

If all you headbangers were of the opinion that Carcass were Britain’s only purveyors of the perverse then you are wrong, because with their eighth full-length slab of pus-filled horror, Desecration have once again confirmed themselves as the often ignored kings of UK gore metal.

‘I, Cadaver’, ‘Rotten Brain Extraction’, ‘Cabletie Castrator’ and ‘Cut Up & Fed To The Dog’ are a just a few of the cerebrally cyst-ridden hymns you’ll be hammered by on this 11-track journey into the bowels of Desecration’s insane asylum. It’s been six years since the band’s rather average 2008 Forensix platter of splatter, but I’m pleased to say that the band is back to their usual vileness with Cemetery Sickness.

Those responsible for the musical acts of butchery are vocalist / guitarist Ollie Jones, drummer Michael Hourihan and bassist Andi Morris. As one should expect from a posse of musicians which has spent time with other great UK bands such as Onslaught and Extreme Noise Terror, Desecration is as professional as ever and begins its parasitic raid on the flesh with the gruelling gasps of the title track. This clanking lump of phlegm rattles in the lungs like a clot that refuses to shift itself from its warm, threatening bed of tissue. Boosted by the gore-gurgling vocals and a hammering drum, it’s typical Desecration: violent, rancid and bubbling with blood.

The line-up changes of the past seem to have never affected the band’s ability to spit blood with ever enchanting malice, and the bile-filled coughs never let up once you’ve let these doctors of disease into your home. ‘Coffin Smasher’ features a clinical drum spray and sporadic guitar jab which has the effect of a circular saw buzzing inconsistently towards your ears before the trio rushes into a storm of nail-gun drums, battering bass and machine-gun guitars. Desecration combines the steely athleticism of Carcass with the lobotomized snarl of Autopsy, but only faster and more rabid.

Indeed, for a band to have its debut album Gore And Perversion (1995) banned due to its horrid cover art ,and then for the group to be arrested and subsequently released with a warning to “tone it down” meant that Desecration were always going to garner a cult following.

Even so, in spite of the shock tactics, there has always been a talent behind the band. With the likes of ‘Recipes Of Horror’, ‘Mortuary Debauchery’ and that timeless classic ‘Cunt Full Of Maggots’, Desecration’s latest malignant tumour was always going to embed itself into our flesh the way we hoped it would.

Neil Arnold

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