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MORBIFIC
Bloom Of The Abnormal Flesh

Memento Mori / Me Saco Un Ojo / Headsplit (2025)
Rating: 8.5/10

The Finnish slime cometh once again as Morbific excretes a third dollop of manky death metal on our shores. Definitely an improvement on the strange tone of the last album (2022’s Squirm Beyond The Mortal Realm), Bloom Of The Abnormal Flesh is the band evolving by implementing several styles into their death metal framework.

There are some thrashy riffs to devour throughout and touches of death grind too, but it’s certainly the thrash elements which surprised me. Somehow the Finnish trio can take an Anthrax-style chug, coat it in filth and create something refreshing. Some of the juggernaut rolls may provide a Morbid Angel-esque twist too, but with a majority of songs offered there seems to be more technicality and unpredictability as ‘Panspermic Blight’ will attest. It’s not exactly zany or discordant, just busier than the sludge-caked rhythms I anticipated.

Morbific have obviously decided to stray from the well-trodden path by crafting a plethora of pattern shifts, but for sheer heaviness then plug in to the crushing opening of ‘Menagerie Of Grotesque Trophies’. This is utterly despicable death-doom where the drums of Onni Väkeväinen exist as thunderous slams of gloom. However, it doesn’t remain in that despondent quarry, instead there’s a percussive kick which in turn jolts the riff.

Considering the album runs just shy of 45 minutes there are so many layers to peel back. Those with a penchant for despairing grind need look no further than the initial advances of ‘Crusading Necrotization’ and the monstrous ‘From Inanimate Dormancy’.

This album is one of the heaviest slabs you will hear, and it pukes up some truly memorable grooves; ‘Womb Of Deathless Deterioration (Trapped In The Essence Of Putresence)’, the weird and wonderful title track and opener ‘Smut Club (For The Chosen Scum)’. There are gushes of pace too, even if it’s intermittently released from the cracks clogged with clay. ‘Hydraulic Slaughter’ is mid-paced but far livelier than most of the other colossal compositions, while closer ‘Slithering Decay’ has a feisty Swedish gallop to its construction and ‘Promethean Mutilation’ rumbles with methodical brain-mashing precision.

There’s a potent mix of the moodily atmospheric and the direct heaviness with Bloom Of The Abnormal Flesh, an album that cements Morbific’s place as being one of the best death metal bands around.

Neil Arnold

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