PUTRID OFFAL
Mature Necropsy
Kaotoxin (2015)
Rating: 9/10
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As preparation for this raging slab of death metal, French extreme metallers Putrid Offal battered our senses with the horrible 2014 EP Suffering. I was pretty convinced by the strong overtones of Swedish death metal as expected from these old school gods, and I salivated over the rancid vocal burps enough to want to throw myself into this long-awaited debut platter of re-recorded cult classics from the early 90s.
It’s hard to believe that this bunch first formed so long ago (in 1991), but were only involved in a couple of split projects and demo releases before suffering a long hiatus as a death metal act by way of changing its moniker to M.Pheral before returning to form in 2013.
Putrid Offal is one addictive band; after a few listens I am confident enough to say that this veritable feast of cuts is going to be one of the year’s death metal highlights, especially for collectors of this band given that it resurrects the truly wondrous years when death metal was at its most potent. Rather than just offering up predictable nostalgia over time, the quartet has always been the master when it comes to the art of mixing styles and injecting some peculiar instrumentation to the point of originality.
While fans of that buzzing, loose Swedish sound will find much to savour here there is a real sense of wicked innovation by way of guitarist Franck Peiffer’s excellent vocal delivery, which one moment comes across as a black metal sneer, while the next coming across as an arrogant bellow. The guitar sound throughout the opus is both deep and cavernous, always hinting at that classy early 90s Swedish groove but the next something altogether more nefarious and thrashy.
By marrying death, thrash and black metal along with a grindcore slant, Putrid Offal isn’t just catchy by chance; one moment the band lumbers through the toxic netherworld of ‘Repulsive Corpse’, the next rattling with despicable speed via the slick strains of ‘Garroting Way’ where the instrumentation is so devilishly destructive. The latter is the track where that essence of originality springs from, with the perverse posse injecting a strange Gothic segment and some truly evil-sounding vocal snarls which would seem at home on a Carcass record.
How on earth these guys never became popular within the genre I’ll never know, but now the band can be experienced again through 13 tracks (15 on the physical CD, including two bonus cover versions; S.O.D.’s ‘Freddy Krueger’ and Nerve’s ‘Sane Men’) where the band presents itself in its rawest grinding form as well as a newer, freshly tweaked entity.
This is how I want murky death metal to sound, because vocally Peiffer has to be one of the genre’s finest at sounding so convincingly vile and conniving. Although a majority of the tracks on offer are built upon a foundation of cruel, grinding blast beats and that gruelling, frothing guitar sound, each infected cut feels so unpredictable in its hammering and with the aid of modern technology breathes new life into crusty old gems such as ‘From Plasma To Embalming’ and ‘Rotted Flesh’. Of all the fast flesh feasts my favourite joint has to be the annihilating ‘Organic Excavation’ where Peiffer somehow seems to lower his vocal tone even further into the depths of dank Hell, while with ‘Premature Necropsy’ we have another of those silt-coated riffs that lumbers in before the band lurches into a frantic pace.
Mature Necropsy is very much an old school death / grind record. I’m often sceptical when bands re-record their original works, but this is one project so darn refreshing in its speed and dexterity that one can only marvel at its pungent noise. And with the gargantuan slam of ‘Symptom’ and less inviting speedball that is ‘Birth Remains’, Putrid Offal caps off an album that – although long in coming – is an ideal way of collecting those original split projects and the like, and dragging them from the grave into the present.
If you’re lucky enough to get hold of the limited edition first pressing of the Mature Necropsy CD, you’ll also get a bonus disc – Premature Necropsy: The Carnage Continues – featuring a complete discography compilation, remastered from the original analog master tapes.
Neil Arnold
