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OCCULSED
Crepitation Of Phlegethon

Everlasting Spew (2021)
Rating: 8/10

Kenneth Parker (vocals), Justin Stubbs (guitar and bass) and Jared Moran (drums) have been in over one hundred bands between them. A staggering statistic, and Atlanta, Georgia-based Occulsed is another to add to the list.

With its Suffocation-styled cover art and brain-perplexing track titles (‘Peryphlegethonic Mindflaying’, ‘Concupiscence Of Frenzied Humors’ etc.) this debut album was always going to interest me, having previously been introduced to the band via their 2020 demo Ceremonial Lifelessness.

Those of you seeing the cover art and expecting some hi-tech death noodling will be disappointed, but if you like your death metal ugly and cavernous then take a slurp of these phlegm-coated walls.

After a brief intro we get the gloomy flurry of ‘Unction Of Muliebrous Broth’, a filthy blur of sick, ulcerated churning whereby all members present are sodden with spit, mouldy lava and bat shit, which is what happens when you spend your sorry days making death metal records inside a volcano.

Not quite as drowning as, say, Grave Miasma, Occulsed still inhabits the lower tiers of those putrid plateaus where percussive thuds reek of damp designs, bludgeoning bass lines drip with wall fat, the guitar sound acts as a remote, vile hammering, and the vocals are echoing squeals of vomited dismay.

Sure, there are strong dismal hints of Incantation and that sort of catacomb-dwelling vibe, but if you like murky death metal then why not chow down on the rotten meat miasma of ‘The Soul’s Admonishment’ with its blasting, blizzard haste, or the rancid, spectral yawning of ‘Lurid Placeless Echoes’, a formidable gust of gangrenous silt and furnace slop.

At once the atmosphere created by Occulsed is humid and icy, foul-smelling and suffocating, and even when those furious charges seem to burst free from the warts on the layered, greased walls, you become so easily dragged into the mists of sludge. ‘Tendon Pandentum’ is a horrendous piece of slime, while ‘Death Of Ratiocination’ builds slowly with misery and menace as those chugging heaps of flab give way to more volatile doses of speed.

‘The Glory Of Woe’ brings this vile composition to a close, buckling under the weight of its own slime, grit and chunky fluid as a creaky death / doom vibe escalates into a dreary trickle of utter despair.

Occulsed are creators of noise that dribbles from every crevice and crack of Hell’s incandescent corners.

Neil Arnold

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