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MUTAGENIC HOST
The Diseased Machine

Memento Mori / Dry Cough / Gurgling Gore (2025)
Rating: 8/10

In a world ravaged by artificial intelligence, London, England-based death metal troupe Mutagenic Host wade through the human debris with a debut album that provides the perfect soundtrack to its own warnings. Admittedly underwhelmed by the band’s 2023 demo, I decided to have faith in this full-length and have been rewarded for my own perseverance.

Unlike last year’s disappointing Maul outing (In The Jaws Of Bereavement), Mutagenic Host, even with the occasional blackened hardcore sways, still manage to cough up a bruising death metal debut built upon chugging riffs and an all round sense of guttural construction and destruction. The bulbous groove-laden riffs alone act as mighty immovable pillars amidst a sea of landscape smoke and sky dust. You can put these marauders in the same billowing bluster as Celestial Sanctuary for utmost grinding, thumping percussion and husky horror, all running in pulverising yet measured tandem with those immense and memorable riffs.

Somewhat focused on the end of days, The Diseased Machine provides the perfect mix of smouldering and slamming while maintaining a bleak outlook as yarns are spun as bleak, apocalyptic tales born from sci-fi yet funnelled into harsh reality. An essence of Bloodbath is evident throughout The Diseased Machine; well driven fat chunks of mid-to-late 90s Swedish belligerence coupled with a meaty Floridian vibe and laced with a blackened hardcore aggression.

The tracks are kept relatively simple; either charging with a HM-2 infectious precision or delivered as mid-tempo slabs of concrete. There’s nothing subtle about the ground n’ pound stranglehold of this opus which rolls like a bulldozer, flattening all in its wake via a selection of colossal riffage. Exhibit A is the gargantuan juggernaut stomp of ‘Incomprehensible Methods Of Slaughter’ that clanks along with its mid-tempo drudgery of bass, percussion and chesty vocal chops of Ash Moore.

This is hefty, burly pulsating material that throbs with a grinding persuasion and hardcore brutality personified by another mammoth slab in the form of ‘Organometallic Assimilation’ as again the riffs, bass and percussion act as destructive punches to the delicate cranium of the listener. As the visions of an eroded planet, more so focused on a plague-ridden London emerge, Mutagenic Host’s dystopian eruptions force one to envisage a stark, looming horror. At times the riffs are blackened flurries that border upon a thrashing menace (‘Artificial Harvest Of The Obscene’ and ‘The Twisted Helix’), while with ‘S.W.A.R.M. (Systematic War Against Restless Machines)’ there is a pummeling mixture of jarring riffage and jerks of haste.

Riff after monstrous riff churns from the conveyor belt, and while the band rarely does anything that different it’s simply down to the titanic nature of the grooves that they succeed within their framework. ‘Genestealer’ is another behemoth, initially stomping with mid-paced clogs before thrashing like some apocalyptic wind.

It’s refreshing that Mutagenic Host delivers its cacophony bereft of swampiness like so many bands within the current saturated genre. Sure, there’s nothing remotely unorthodox about the approach from the guys, but when you’re taking on the power of A.I. then you require a massive armoury to dispose of its negative influence and Mutagenic Host have it in droves.

As the blustery ‘Promethean Dusk’ and the churning, mashing ‘Rivers Of Grief’ round this debut off I’m once again blown away by the talent within this ever burgeoning UK death metal scene. For meat and muscle, Mutagenic Host’s debut album provides the perfect savagery and security in a world that with every passing day feels less like our own.

Neil Arnold

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