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DRIPPING DECAY
Festering Grotesqueries

Satanik Royalty (2023)
Rating: 8/10

Dripping Decay’s 2021 demo Watching You Rot was a real gem from this Portland, Oregon-based quartet, so I’m rather pleased by their return with this debut full-length album. All the songs from the demo appear here alongside another batch of bone breakers, all of which rather unsurprisingly channel the gruesome 90s death metal flavour, so expect to hear the likes of Pestilence, Autopsy and Morbid Angel as the hits are churned out like chunks of gristle.

From the start with ‘Autocannibal Ecstasy’ it is clear that drummer Jason Borton lives up to his nickname “The Machine” as he bashes the skins as if he was a maniac taking his hammer to a skull. This is savage death metal delivered as relatively short bursts of grim speed that exhibit a punkiness with their stride.

‘Abundant Cadaveric Waste’ is prime Autopsy worship where vocalist Eric Stucke rabidly chews on congealed meat and sloppily spits out the cysts over the layers of grinding filth created by the guitar of Neil Smith and the bass of Jackson Jordan. Of course there is a cartoon goofiness about the likes of ‘Gut Muncher’, ‘Barf Bag’, the title track and the rest of the gory buckets of crap which are vomited forth, but that’s the joy of decrepit old school death metal.

Much of what is offered here is pacey, but one cannot deny the pleasure of wading through the mud tempo slop of ‘Watching You Rot’ and ‘Limitless Sacrifice’ with their fetid, clanking bass and riff sludge.

As the cover art suggests, this debut is rich in its kaleidoscopic horror and as equally abundant in its inspirations, resulting in a simple yet effective musical bloodbath which feverishly feeds off the sticky blood of the old gods.

Neil Arnold

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