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TRENCH FOOT
Sacrificial Gore EP

Stump Grinder (2021)
Rating: 8.5/10

Emerging from the rat-ridden sewers of Liverpool, England comes Trench Foot, a new, unhealthy death metal force coated in slop and oozing slime.

Sacrificial Gore is the debut release and it hasn’t left the stereo – my cassette has embedded itself into the tape deck and congealed sick has leaked from the speakers. With this offering of offal we get four tracks, all being the creation of the unhinged Joe Bradley.

After a short yet ominous opening track entitled ‘A Prelude To Gore’, we find ourselves caked in blood as ‘Drowned In Offal’ begins its fetid journey with a sample from 80s zombie movie Day Of The Dead providing extra musty atmosphere as the track grinds into a catchy chug laced with Bradley’s grim, guttural and congested growls.

It’s almost as if Trench Foot’s sound has been created in the bowls of its own stomach as cavernous, grinding riffs compete with a gnawing bass and percussive thud, each instrument chomping at the gut wall. Faster segments propelled by hostile blast beats enable the sound to shake off the stagnant algae.

‘Cannibal Castration’ aggravates the infection as clotted pus weeps from the grooves as another flabby riff twists with evil, murky delight and is splattered by the hammering delight of the drums. At one point the riff sounds like a rusty machine gun as Bradley chokes on his own vomit between morbid drum thuds.

Finally, ‘Canine Mutilation’ provides a bark as bad as its bite as another cool film sample gives way to a melancholic rhythmic stirring. Here, the mid-tempo meandering provides a mouldy atmosphere before the hideous chugging arrives and we are swept away in tides of crusty blood where cysts coat the surface like grim lily pads.

For the most part, Trench Foot swells in a mid-paced basement of old school death metal and injects occasional flurries of pace. The mix is perfect to the point of leaving me more rabid than Cujo for the next unhygienic instalment.

There’s so much quality squalid death metal around at the moment and now you can add Trench Foot to the list. Sacrificial Gore is a miasmic, fetid and festering formation of audible foulness and fustiness and I urge you to drown in its symphonies of sickness.

Neil Arnold

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