PUTRED
Megalit al Putrefacției
Memento Mori / Iron Fortress (2025)
Rating: 8/10
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Scabbier than a rat-ravaged decomposing corpse, Transylvanian madmen Putred claw through the crumbling rib-cage once again and shower their unsuspecting audience in maggots. Megalit al Putrefacției is the second full-length from this deathly foursome that, since 2020, has burst many a pus-filled boil in the way of split projects and singles.
It’s fitting that this album, whose title translates as “Megalith Of Rot”, should end with a cover of Autopsy’s ‘Critical Madness’ because this is the sort of rotten, mid-tempo drudgery us death metal fans crave. Sticking to their even stickier tools, Putred pukes up familiar piles of gore, chomping like bloodthirsty walking corpses. Those accustomed to these Romanian grave-robbers will find nothing new here, but who cares because this is what ghastly, filthy death metal should sound like. Juicy riffs combine with ugly vocals throughout to create the sort of mouldy atmosphere indicative of the morbid side of present day death metal.
‘Dominare Maleficã’ begins with a horrible downtrodden trudge that makes me want to dive into a pit of squelching compost. The bass dribbles through the peat bog like a river of congealed gravy. This is steady misery punctured by glum leads and a foul, chesty vocal smog.
As the album reveals itself further it could be argued that Putred’s pile of bile is about as meat n’ potatoes as it gets. But damn, it’s just so heavy and sodden like an old blanket hiding a heavily mutilated corpse. Rarely does pace apply here as the likes of ‘Inscripții Antice’, ‘Necromanție’, ‘Aură Macabră’ and ‘Spectre Torturate’ steadily slog like a gravedigger shovelling the last mounds of soaking earth into the hole.
As with a lot of this stuff its grimness originates from the pungent orifice of Autopsy, feasting on its own repugnant excretions to the soundtrack of fetid percussive thuds and dire gloom riffs. How can one not writhe in the squalid grumbles of ‘Părăsit în Purgatoriu’ and the deep, bowel burrowing riffs of ‘Era Morbidității’. This is what real organic death metal should sound like – macabre subterranean and dripping with guttural menace.
Neil Arnold
