RSS Feed


SOMATIC DECAY
Existential Decadence EP

Iron Lung (2022)
Rating: 8/10

Here’s another filthy example of how death metal has evolved over the last few years as bands attempt to create humid, suffocating caverns of gnashing entities and feasting grubs.

Somatic Decay is a two-piece out of Portland,Oregon featuring Ryan Koger (vocals and drums) and Nathan McCleary (guitar and bass). Together they create a dank, hellish hole of swampy aesthetics which engulf the listener like black billowing clouds of thick, putrid smoke.

For those who may not know, these guys were in Ossuarium, whose 2019 debut album Living Tomb was an impressive slab of filth. But let’s fast-forward to the here and now and this three-song, 14-minute EP of grinding, paralysing mechanics which grind like unoiled machinery grating on flesh n’ bone.

The vocals are mere grotesque coughs of cyst-coated brutality as slower passages of utmost gloom give way to beckoning tides of ferocity, and within minutes you’re reduced to ash as the duo steadily batters you with a vile bass sound, and a chugging, enveloping riffage of doom.

It’s not the most diverse thing you’ll hear this year, but the thickening air of gloominess is enough to drag you around for its duration where you become accustomed to the repetitive beating. But that’s not to say it’s a generic outing either.

A lot of bands today within the genre are combing bone-littered quagmires and creating similar smoggy, boggy sounds, and it all works just fine. Just succumb to the grating jog of ‘Surrender The Flesh’ with its relentless guzzling, and then there’s that shift into utter sludge as the twosome just ooze evil with that hammering percussion and those foggy, distant burps.

Opener ‘Mutilated Facades’ is that out of control generator that spews up its own nuts n’ bolts before slowing to a grinding slog. But whatever pace is thrown, there’s always that clogged filter to contend with as Somatic Decay just drags on through pea-soup fens, producing great dollops of the macabre with each hideous strain.

Closer ‘Total Human Obsolescence’ is catchy in its schlep, driving at a Bolt Thrower-styled menace and sludginess whereby even with haste the assault remains dragging, aching and yawning out piles of wet silt.

Somatic Decay are just another vile band to keep an eye on as the death metal genre just continues to dominate and spit out the bones of anyone not strong enough to contend with such humid heaps of slurry.

Neil Arnold

<< Back to Album & EP Reviews



Related Posts via Categories
Share