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SHRIEKING DEMONS
The Festering Dwellers

Transcending Obscurity (2025)
Rating: 8.5/10

In 2021 this Italian death metal mob unleashed their debut EP Diabolical Regurgitations and then seemingly vanished. I don’t know where the band has been hiding out – although each member does feature for other bands – but they’ve crawled out of the tomb and hit us with this full-length debut album.

With its eye-catching cover art The Festering Dwellers offers up ten tracks that feverishly evoke the demonic rattles of Possessed and Autopsy in equal measure. This is rabid death metal that chomps on your limbs and tightens its grip with each thrashing spasm. There’s little room here for swamp stodge because Shrieking Demons blow away any cobwebs with their ravenous scowls as from the off ‘Devour My Wicked Soul’ hacks and slashes like some knife-wielding maniac possessed by the voice of Chuck Schuldiner. Indeed, a thrashier Death is very much conjured throughout the songs, especially on ‘Perennial Dirge’. But select any cut here and revel in a sound that is somehow both old and refreshing.

Things are kept simple throughout; gnashing rhythms combine with equally raw and foaming vocals, the result being a sound that is loose n’ lethal and very much a seething platter drenched in a rawness. The tracks come thick and fast like salivating wraiths swirling around a musty citadel, with ‘Compromised Brain’ boasting a vicious groove built upon a sturdy foundation of bass from Nino. Within the vile torrents there are sweet melodies of sickness to behold as the savagery of ‘Sorrowful Dismal Bliss’ consumes the senses with the slick axe work from Valentina’s rhythmn guitar and then the scorching lead work from Giorgio. This also comes to the fore on the aforementioned ‘Perennial Dirge’ where the vocals of Gabri take on banshee highs and throaty howls.

If ever there was a death metal act that lived up to its name then it’s Shrieking Demons, but it’s not all frantic thrashing. ‘Abstract Hallucinating’ is an incredible exhibition of guitar work and also a good example as to how the gang shift seamlessly from hasty episodes to grisly mid-tempo doominess straight from the Autopsy book of bile. Closing track ‘Apostasy, Sodomy And Sacrilege’ begins with a ridiculously meaty gallop before the shift into a macabre trudge. It’s arguably the most rewarding song on the album as deft solos entwine with Carcass-styled glistening grooves under a veil of doom.

Put simply, if you adore that late 80s death metal scene just as it was about to transition into the 90s then The Festering Dwellers will no doubt transport you back to that golden era.

Neil Arnold

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