RSS Feed


ETERNAL ROT
Putridarium

Godz Ov War Productions (2020)
Rating: 8.5/10

Aaahhh, the soothing buzz of swarming flies, and the glorious stench of crusty roadkill. What better way to spend your summer. And to top it all off, why not slap on the most ideal of soundtracks for such blistering heat and smouldering decomposition.

Putridarium is the second release from Polish maniacs Eternal Rot; a gargling, festering, slime-soaked abomination of an outfit that have spent their time holed up in some British abode surrounded by rattling, dust-coated skeletons, gawping maggot-ridden corpses and to a stifling fume of mouldiness.

Okay, so my imagination is running wild, but just one listen to this toxic swamp of a record and like me you’ll imagine yourself being surrounded by characters from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as demented, squawking caged animals flutter and fit, while outside a blazing sun warps the window panes and forms golf ball-sized beads of sweat on your already humid brow.

From the sludge fudge fuckery of opener ‘Downward Among The Departed’ you are propelled into a syrupy fog of foul odours, whereby cloying webs of misery and putridity gnaw at your flesh to a gurgled soundtrack of slow motion doom traipses; weighty, dragging ghoulish tones haunted by whispering vocal smears and a percussive drone that lumbers and trudges until you are slowly left choking on the shit that’s forced down your neck.

‘Serenity Through Maniacal Flagellation With Decomposing Limbs’ doesn’t necessarily need such a title to express its morbidity and globules of grandeur, but it still ups the murkiness, throws in dobs of raping horror, streaks it with echoes of dismay and creepiness and then rounds the whole lump of fetid crap off with a bunch of instruments that just drag themselves through phlegm, ooze and innards.

The aching fustiness and slurping vocal manoeuvres are nothing more than the sound of rusty machinery clogged like some failing meat grinder that has chewed and chomped on too many limbs; its final burp of nausea resulting in one great pile of blubbery, twitching sick. It’s just one grinding mass of perverted pulp, a sickening washing machine cycle of human entrails churning and foaming until said machine erupts and ruptures, spilling milky gelatinous fluids and shards of twisted bone from its failing cogs.

Eternal Rot takes horrific death / doom to new levels of gloom and slop; a squirming entity of unnatural odour and sound as ‘Endless Stream Of Coffins’ begins another lifeless journey of devouring drabness, while drums hammer like piss-soaked pistons and what resemble guitars and bass are blended together with blood, marrow, hair and pus to create another immense geyser of squalid, sordid remnants.

The lyrics, for all of their dismal rapport, are nothing more than silted poetry hidden behind this wall of trembling fat and hardened liquids. The often repetitive grinds just swirl with no real pace or aim, just merely existing like some utterly depressed and deformed manifestation that heaves out of time, feasting upon its own moans and bones.

Closer ‘Descent Into Torment’ doesn’t bode well either with its title, and as you may have guessed this one rains on down with similar gloopy ejaculate as the words “Eyeless lyncher take my life, goring through chained arms” squirm from the mass of mess, vocals that exist merely as squelches and squirts of grey gastric ooze.

There is nothing at all to be enjoyed by such a sorry blurt of bludgeoning, billowing and bulbous herniation, but damn this is such an engulfing and churning record; a quivering gargantuan cyst of ghastly tumour-riddled chords that bellow and vibrate, the humidity of such expression forming great glacial fungus feasts. Indeed, why just talk about the drums, bass and guitar when Eternal Rot create so much more; a thickly spreading cancer of flesh-eating power that with every coil devours the listener and itself before disappearing into the verminous hole of its own stinking orifices.

Putridarium is a horror show like no other – squelching like the remnants of some forgotten Lovecraftian nightmare, leaving smouldering pools of excrement and blood in its wake.

Neil Arnold

<< Back to Album & EP Reviews



Related Posts via Categories
Share