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STENCHED
Purulence Gushing From The Coffin

Me Saco Un Ojo / Extremely Rotten Productions (2024)
Rating: 7/10

I didn’t think anything could actually gush from a coffin, but here we are gushing with gore for the debut full-length outing from Mexican one-man band Stenched, the brainchild of Monterrey-based musician Adrian.

This unhygienic ghoul was responsible last year for the fetid ooze otherwise known as the Gorging On Mephitic Rot demo, a solid and squelching short stack of slop and sewer plop that clogged the arteries. It was good enough to stir the juices of the death metal community who will find similar chunks of gristle to savour here.

Put Stenched in a room with the likes of Seep, Septage and Sequestrum and watch them all devour each other with glee to a soundtrack of gloopy riffs, sodden percussion and vocal spewing. Stenched is part of the compost heap that writhes with slugs and stinks of damp.

As expected, the titles are the usual descriptive rot plucked from the Carcass textbook of vile wordplay. Tracks such as ‘Morbid Mass Of Repulsive Purulence’ and ‘Eye Socket Pus Emanation’ are somewhat childlike in their Technicolor splatter as Adrian excretes numerous indecipherable burps amidst sickly grinding riffs. In this day and age such fetid notions are extremely common within the manky folds of the death metal genre, with bands such as Cerebral Rot (R.I.P.), Hemorrhoid, Pharmacist and the likes being proof of more modern meandering into squelching noise.

Purulence Gushing From The Coffin pretty much continues from last year’s demo, gurgling and then spitting up rancid chunks of congealed phlegm which are channelled through abhorrent riffs that sound as if Adrian is shovelling guts into your speakers. The malodorous grime of ‘Wormridden Torso’ sounds as if it was recorded in a toilet cistern, so it’s hard to believe that such septic slop came from Monterrey.

In spite of the foul odours which emanate from the squalid ‘Mucus, Phlegm And Bile’ and the gangrenous ‘Effusion Of Foul Smelling Fluids’ this is still incredibly predictable in its pungent potency. Sure, through algae-coated goggles I can revel in the cosy familiarity of such goo as ‘Death Maniacal Obsession’ and the innards twisting mulch of ‘Ecstasy Through Pestilence’, but Stenched is what Stenched is, a less absorbing Cerebral Rot. However, it’s still the debut I was hoping for even if the sickly scope for such noise is limited.

Neil Arnold

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