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ECTOPLASMA
Cavern Of Foul Unbeings

Memento Mori (2018)
Rating: 8/10

A trickling intro (‘Amorphous Atrocity’) bleeds and leads us into the vile world of Greek act Ectoplasma, an earthy, grim quartet who began life in 2013 but came to my attention through their 2016 debut Spitting Coffins. And so as I wake to the sound of buzzing flies and the foul stench of rotting flesh, I’m more than happy to take in the sepulchral fumes of these guys again.

Cavern Of Foul Unbeings is a no frills album of old school death metal; a wholesome chunk of maggot-ridden flesh straight out of 1991 and with enough density and charred fumes to coat the lungs and cake the nostrils.

Fans of California’s Rude and the likes will no doubt enjoy this slab. The band chokes us with 11 sturdy tunes, including a half-decent cover of the Unleashed track ‘The Immortals’ which somehow seems out of place perched at the end of the record.

But that aside, wrench open the coffin and dive in. You can pluck any of the tracks on offer out and you’ll happily gorge yourself until your heart is content as this bunch of maniacs puke up several damp ‘n’ dreary lumps of moss-covered tunes, all wrapped up with a film of chugging menace and melody.

As one would expect from an album so keen to nod to the past, the whole air created by this foul opus is one of mouldy fogginess, and even when the pace quickens to blow the cob-webs away we’re still very much entrenched in a bloody pit of horror as the riffs clog up nicely and the melancholic strains of the bass plunder on through the swampy percussive heaving.

Sure, if this had been released in 1991 it may have been swallowed up by the far superior beings that became titans of the scene, but one gets the feeling from Ectoplasma that they are just happy to rob the graves of the great bands that carved out this despicable sound all those merry decades ago.

The excellent ‘Seized In Cimmerian Darkness’ combines both nasty pace and murky drudgery. Dion K. Alastor’s leads at times find it a struggle to make themselves heard within that sticky cavern of bellowing tumult, while Maelstrom’s drums remain unrelenting; sickly thuds of doom that rumble, tumble and roll like an army of slugs forming a carpet of gooey blackness to ensnare the listener.

The title track retains the sludginess before awakening itself into a juddering sprint. Bassist Giannis Grim’s vocals are a reminder of days of old; his expressions as cloying as the thickening wall of guitars which drip like body fat that has cemented itself on the ceiling only to melt slowly within the glare of Hell’s caustic flames. That mournful slog just indicative of how old school metal made its name, the catchy melody dripping in sorrowful sickness.

And that’s the pattern for the whole record. ‘Reanimated In Trioxin’ and ‘Disembodied Voice’ are both rank structures of gloomy death metal, while ‘GhoulSpawn’ thrashes its limbs as if it were a victim to a spidery web, straining at the leash as the leads thread their way through the mulch only to be pegged back by the suffocating drum glue.

What Ectoplasma has achieved with album number two is a wondrously stuffy odour that emanates from a coupling of gloopy guitars, grotesque vocal coughs and horror-obsessed topics. Standard by design, but so invigorating to experience.

Neil Arnold

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