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Galgendood

Transcending Obscurity (2023)
Rating: 9/10

A lot of murky and mucky extreme metal has emerged this year, so why not add one-man algae muncher Gateway to the steaming pile of moss. During July of 2015 Belgian professor of the putrid Robin van Oyen coughed up Gateway’s self-titled debut full-length outing, and now, eight years later, his swampy highness has once again concocted a boiling potion that fizzes, bubbles, slurps and oozes like one of those Portland, Oregon death metal geysers.

Galgendood is a slime-clogged bog-fest of rank vocal gurgles and sodden death-doom tumult. You’ll find this primitive slop on the same fetid bayou as the likes of Mortiferum and Krypts; a rotten and pungent quagmire which bathes in the humidity and yet the production on this entity is fantastic.

Robin van Oyen’s hideous growls emanate from the grotesque abyss like some dormant manifestation that has spent much of its life buried in its own mucus, excrement and blood before rising from the congealed depths of a stagnant pool like some behemoth casting aside the mists that swirl atop an imposing mountain.

This is vile yet bombastic extreme metal that slumbers and flows at the same time. There is musical clarity yet a foggy haze too as the grandiose yet guttural ‘The Coexistence Of Dismal Entities’ runs its course like a slithering and all consuming green gloop. ‘Sacrificial Blood Oath In The Temple Of K’zadu’ has that Lovecraftian hue about its creepy contours, but what really sticks to the lungs like thick phlegm is the heaviness. The track steadily builds, seemingly blanketing itself in further damp layers just to add crushing weight. Meanwhile, ‘Scourged At Dawn’ is an abysmal behemoth, utterly colossal in its traipse; hard to believe then that one man is behind such a gargantuan and revolting creation.

Galgendood is so good that it just might shake up what is already a productive genre, but this composition is not only cavernous in its trudging but expansive through its foul, oozing design. Death-doom never sounded so gloomy… this is a true titan of terror for warthogs in stale bogs everywhere.

Neil Arnold

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