KIRITSIS ~ Kiritsis (2025)

 The debut self-titled album from Indiana band Kiritsis and its right on the money, delivering a gut punch of groovy sludge with a slice of spiteful, crusty hardcore to make your bad day even worse. The guitar sounds like someone's running amok through the abattoir wielding a chainsaw, clogged up with blood, snot and chunks of gore.

Kiritsis follows an increasing trend of crusty sludge bands spattering clots of mid paced death metal among their albums, particularly the track 'Deny.Defend.Dispose, straining the sinews of extreme metal around a thick, congealed core.

Have fun picking the scabs off this one.

ABSORB ~ Rot (2023)

Harrowing death/doom with a pall of fetid air hanging over a thick layer of crust. The doom and death elements interlace into a malignant, dissonant, scabrous lesion. Rot is described as an EP but is in fact a full album slaughterhouse of indiscriminate bloodletting.

ATOMWINTER ~ Sakrileg (2023)

I've just finished listening to Sakrileg the new album by Germany's Atomwinter so bear with me, I just need to scrub myself down with bleach and a wire brush before I resume putting down my thoughts on the album.........!

Right, that's better! 

A bit of background on the band's catalogue so far. Their first album 'Atomic Death Metal' was released in 2012 and does exactly what the album title says playing straight ahead death metal of a particularly brutal kind. 'Iron Flesh' crawled into existence three years later keeping the brutality cranked to maximum pain thresholds but this time with a layer of crusty doom/death. 'Catacombs' followed in 2018 and was much the same but this time Atomwinter wanted to not only crush us but asphyxiate the last ounce of breath from our broken bodies with a thicker, poisonous mix.

Which leads me onto the new album Sakrileg.

It's the same crusty doom/death grisliness but this time it's all about the death metal riff. Brutality and filth still prevails but Sakrileg is the fastest album the band has yet written despite being weighed down with pustules and scabs.

This album will make even the leprous headbang.

EARTH OF DISTRUST ~ Victimology (2013)

 

Bandcamp reveals yet another gem from its bosom, this time its Earth Of Distrust from Greece. The overriding influence on Victimology  is the rich vein of thick globs of humid, sludgy doom which allows all the other gnarly elements of crust, hardcore and punk to orbit the planet sized riffs without the album disintergrating into unruly chaos.

GOATROACH ~ Plagueborn (2022)

Finnish deathsludge consumed by bilious hatred. Songs of darkness stalk a path of bleak terror from your speakers to eventually infest the Tympanic Membrane of your inner ear before inducing coma. After the global pandemic, Plagueborn from Goatroach is a new, more virulent strain of sludgy death evolving from track to track adding elements of doom, black metal and crust into an already highly toxic viral load.

File under G for Grim

ABÖRIGEN ~ Misantrop​í​a (2022)

Misantropia begins with a blast of feedback overlaid with creepy, skeletal off kilter piano that slowly becomes more manic until the first huge blast of deathgrind mows you down, a killer opening to a totally killer album right to the end of the very last track which, incidentally, is a Napalm Death cover. Misantropia really is a relentless album, crusty, with a vein of blackness running all the way through it. What I particularly love about it is the length of some of the tracks averaging around four minutes, lengthy for this type of music. What this does is allow the crust, death, black and grind to congeal into a thick bludgeoning sludge.

File under F for Filth

GOAT VOMIT NOISE ~ Nihilist Front (EP) 2022

 Obnoxious black death from Italy. There's loads of nasties to contend with in this vicious, eardrum destroying EP.  First off are the hypersonic death riffs that flay you alive, interspersed with surprise switches to an ugly HM-2 onslaught encapsulated in crust that leaves you recoiling from the horror of it all. Goat Vomit Noise

DOOMSDAY DEMENTIA ~ 2018 [2018]

DOOMSDAY DEMENTIA ~ [2018]

DOOMSDAY DEMENTIA belong to the 'slacker' school of sludge, loose, low slung riffs with a fantastic blend of groove and crust, doom and death, literally everything your parents worried about when they found out you'd turned to the metal dark side. A lot of [2018] reminds me of NEGATIVE REACTION without the distinctive vocal style of Ken .E. Bones.

What appeals to me most about this album is that despite the extreme nature of the genres within, it always sounds accessible, that's down to the band embracing the 'Sabbath' sound, each track rattling around at mid to fastish pace. I'd forgotten how enjoyable the whole listening experience is until it materialized on my iTUNES shuffle function.

I checked for up to date information on the band and was surprised at how little there was out there, this great little EP definitely deserves more attention.

TARPAN~ Ведьма (Witch) [ep] 2019

Take the Swedish 'death metal sound' mutate it with a weeping sore like crust and infect it with grind and there you have Russia's Tarpan. For added pain add a hint of doom here and there. The riffs from this band growl and snap at anything brave enough to step nearby, nothing can placate TARPAN, you'll end up getting steamrollered whatever happens. ~ DEATHRATTLE PODCAST

https://tarpancrust.bandcamp.com/albu...