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MUTILATE
Tormentium

Iron Bonehead Productions (2018)
Rating: 9.5/10

I’ve heard a lot of band’s since the late 90s try so desperately to sound as if they were around in the 80s and early 90s. Such worship can often affect a band to the point that their obsession to nostalgia somehow makes their sound rather false. But every now and then a band comes along that sound exactly like the era they worship, and here is the latest cult phenomenon in the form of Mutilate.

This New York death metal pack only formed last year, but if you want to hear an authentic, funereal slice of underground death metal then Tormentium is the pill you should consume. Fans of Death Strike, Autopsy, Death, Hellhammer, Possessed, and just about every grim 80s death metal act need look no further than this foul-smelling, grotesque-sounding slab.

Ten damp, dreary and suffocating chunks of rotten flesh will attract fans and flies alike as the combo trudges in stuffy fashion through the lo-fi realms of the title track; a foggy, nightmarish drool of ravenously infected guitars, dull thudding drums of gloom and a bass that oozes like thick, black dirty pus seeping from a corpse. Boy is this fusty stuff as vocalist Simon Kirke gives off a grizzly performance. His demented scowls rancid in their slurping attack, while the guitars of Hans Kristianson rumble with eerie aplomb.

This is classic, organic death metal straight from a bygone era as ‘Hail To The Dead’ and the aptly titled ‘Engulfed In Sludge’ labour in miserable fashion; the term drudgery precisely applied to this festering lump of melancholic bubbling silt.

Mutilate conjure up numerous underground scenes with their grumbling traipse; the South American clans of dirty ghettos spring to mind but married with an antiquated Autopsy-style of misery and grimness. This is the sort of band that, even through pacier moments – and there are many – sound so darn dirty, robust and gorily trudging.

The eerie wails that emanate from the pustular ‘Splattered Remains’ are a joy to experience; the thick gloopy air of morbidity just so rank as the drums hiss with the effect of one pissing in a sewer lined with human slurry. Meanwhile, the audible butchery of ‘Severed Limbs’ rumbles with such ominous fashion as both bass and drum collide in some sort of doomy roughage before the zombified vocals kick in to start the decaying process of watery speed.

Mutilate generate so many images and sounds of horror that I’m starting to believe that this unhealthy clan of musical corpses are in fact sick stalwarts of a halcyon era that have returned for one more bite. But no, these upstarts have seemingly emerged from some unknown graveyard on the outskirts of a disease-ravaged village and dragged me into their mire as the wretched ‘Human Experimentation’ comes bludgeoning like old, fetid, and war-torn Bolt Thrower, yet with earthier trembles of gloom.

Elsewhere, the sordid ‘Life In Pain’ hammers with a rotten rollicking nature, with Thompson Marsh’s drums a horrible spattering of heavy blood clots upon hard skin to compliment Al Sandberg’s glum bass din, while closer ‘Execution’ whines with miserable accord as the solitary, well-worn Iommi swirl reeks of murky atmosphere before the lumbering, dense slog allows Kirke to burp his final words between gasps of maggot-ridden swallows. That seemingly energetic faster death-thrash cacophony is still incredibly muffled by that lo-fi density, before the putrid posse slinks back into its catacomb, leaving a hideous, pungent fume in its wake.

Now, I’ve heard some killer “old school” worship in the death metal stakes this year, but Mutilate have got that style nailed down harder than Dracula’s coffin lid.

Neil Arnold

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