RSS Feed


LARVAE
Acid Horror Cult EP

Self-released (2022)
Rating: 9/10

Joining the likes of Sequestrum and Leprophiliac on their very own pulpit of pus, Italian / Romanian band Larvae finally drops its next repulsive feast of festering shit – three tracks of squelching abysmal gore infused with a sickly vocal sneer that pukes up its own bowels.

Acid Horror Cult is an utterly disgusting expression of smothering, dank death doom that at times loiters towards such lumbering, fetid ooze that to describe it as music would be an injustice.

The opening title track is just a humid basement buzzing with flies, stinking of vomit and rotten flesh, and squirming to the goo that trickles like syrup from its own dirty crack. It’s just slow-motion water torture from one of the most unhinged bands on the planet, bubbling like a gory gravy pit and more akin to a soundtrack of maggot swarms.

I’m unsure how vocalist Lucilia Sericata plumbs the depths of her soul to come up with such vile squawks of horror; it’s as if her throat is coated in seeping ulcers and her tongue is fighting against the infection only to be pulled back in to her oesophagus.

‘Cold Euphoria’ is the musical equivalent to drowning in a slimebath (to quote Leprophiliac’s latest release) of gelatine, congealed blood, bone marrow and excrement. This is musical torture; a dragging, gnawing distorted fuzz with creepy vocal expressions of ethereal quality alongside the guttural eruptions. “Rots, bloats, burns,” Lucilia burps before maniacally laughing like a crazed witch and then proceeding to indulge in some weird lullaby… it’s terrifying.

For me, Sequestrum’s recent demo release, The Epitome Of Putridity, was the foulest, sickest thing I’d ever heard, but Acid Horror Cult has taken the genre to new extremes. This is a snuff film to overtake the video nasty scare, a dirty, grotty, filthy and infected bucket of mulch that you have to drink to survive, but in turn know that that your innards will harden and your veins will blacken… slowly.

The short outro ‘Summoning The Gory Beast’ is more like an end of life confirmation as your final limb disappears beneath the slurry. I’m desperate for this evil twosome to release a full-length of this stuff because as Lucilia burps “They want to see…”, she knows what addicts we are of this sort of unhygienic product. “Sweat drips on my flesh,” she squeals, “Shivers start appearing”. Larvae create an illness, a sickening fever that consumes the body and the mind. “Colours are changing,” she snorts. It’s like a drug-induced haze of sleaze and I’m behind the camera revelling in such horrors.

Acid Horror Cult is an all too short yet atrocious spectacle for sickos.

Neil Arnold

<< Back to Album & EP Reviews



Related Posts via Categories
Share