ALBUM REVIEW: Putrevore – Miasmal Monstrosity

Old school Death Metallers PUTREVORE return with their 4th album, set for release via Xtreem Music on October 5th.

Jumping in with a blend of fierce drumming, guttural vocals and swampy riffs, the immediately gruesome music has that fetid feeling of bands like Incantation, Rottrevore, Funebre and Rippikoulu with a revoltingly spewed splendour coming from the trio in unison. Battering the drums with unrelenting fury before pulling back into doomy grooves, the rhythmic flow of this thing is phenomenal from the get-go. Losing no momentum of grotesqueries, the rotten avalanche of offal coming from the guitars and bass has a sticky sound that lurches through phantasmal riffs and spectral atmospherics triumphantly. This leaves the vocals, which are appropriately filthy, bringing to mind Antti from Demilich. Talking of filth, the production is clear enough to hear everything but coated in a layer of murky dread which feels legitimately 90s. Now I have analysed everything, let us go back to disgusting metaphors. Retching with hooks that are so damned catchy you will never forget the music, while keeping the cerebral splattering of Death Metal’s ugliest moments intact, this album stinks of the deepest crypts and catacombs with each passing moment infecting the air.

Whiplash instrumentals often throw us headlong into a barrage of maniacally masterful soundscapes, the atmosphere being akin to a recently opened tomb. Pungent and morbid, the overall vibe of the album is equal parts evil and rancid, which is a fine line to walk (perfected by the bands I mentioned at the start), but Putrevore handle this with finesse and fantastically foul precision to worship the greats in grandiose fashion. Bludgeoning forth with tight musicianship successfully presenting primitive and grisly ideas, the little over 30 minute running time of the record feels perfect. Do not be fooled into thinking this lacks diversity, there are some slightly more Swedish feeling flares (presumably from Swedeath veteran Rogga) along with a few Bolt Thrower-like riffing to space out the crawls and assault with mid-tempo onslaughts too. There is so many killer moments throughout the unstoppable juggernaut of meaty Death Metal but it also doesn’t linger long enough to leave a bad taste of repetition in the mouth, splitting the different with a skull-caving half hour of total obliteration.

If bands like Adramelech, Funebre, Rippikoulu, Disma, Funebrarum, Incantation, Rottrevore, the list goes on, leave a salivating hunger for truly disgusting, demented and doom-tinged Death Metal of the most cavernously mangled proportions, then Putrevore is a band you cannot afford to miss.