Eternal Rot are new to me but they’ve been slowly honing a truly repulsive death-doom sounds since way back in 2013. With two albums (that are really more like EPs) to their credit, this English/Polish collective took great pains to create some of the wettest, more caustic sewage spew out there. Third platter Moribound keeps the putrid times going with grisly, grotesque sub-sub-basement level filth suitable for a mass grave or Super Fund site. Comparisons can be made to Coffins, Disma, and early Autopsy, but this is thicker and more revolting, borrowing several steaming cups of offal from Cryptworm as the band try to pull your organ meats out through your mouth hole. Definitely not for the faint of heart or those who just ate a big meal, but can it rejuiceify an expired brisket loaf?
You betcha! Opener “Summoned from Moribound Delusions” is the aural equivalent of having a bucket of butcher’s slop dumped over your head on prom night.1 It’s just so thick, sticky, coating you in puerile carrion pâté. It’s also slow and plodding, like stomping through a reeking corpse bog, with huge, oppressive riffs assaulting you as hideous death gurgles rise up from the very manure-muck you’re stuck in. Layered on top of this maniacal motif are eerie church organs and far-off female choral segments that give the listener a feeling of insanity and pending doom. By 2 minutes in you are disoriented and things just get worse from there. You crawl through the slime only to run headlong into “Reflected in Perpetual Waves of Despair” and its more urgent, uptempo crushitude, drowned in garbage disposal vox that will run train on your ear canals. There’s a bit of a loose Sabbath-esque swing and swagger at the midpoint of “Swollen Corpse Adoration,” but otherwise there’s little in the way of respite from the mega-heavy chugs and terminal yaking since there are no rest areas in Hell.
For my money, the big highlight is closer “Lurker in the Morgue.” This is the near-perfect distillation of the Eternal Rot formula, with a ginormous heaving riff at its center that weighs a fucking ton. Its simplicity is its strength and as it grooves along to the garbled, hellish, inhuman vocals, you will find a kind of Hellraiser-esque paradise of pain. Are there issues with this parade of terrors? Well, not every song hits with the same primal concrete sledge, and “Gestures Never Recalled” lacks the sheer shock and awe factor that other cuts deliver. Nothing is bad though and the dreadful atmosphere is kept in place at all times. Their style can also come across as one-note, since it’s totally fucking one-note, with relentlessly plodding, nightmare-inducing dirge-death the only selection on the morgue brunch menu. A bit of a sound shakeup would benefit things and more frequent use of eerie organs would be a boon too, but these scum dogs just want to frolic in the muck as they have on past releases. At a scant 34 minutes, there isn’t much cadaver meat on the witch bone, so you won’t end up feeling overstuffed. The production is well-suited to their particular brand of nausea sausage, with a big, oppressive guitar tone and all the throat cultures placed way up front in your maskless face. It’s a wonderous shit show (now containing 34% more shit).
Operating as a three-piece, Peter Mayer handles guitar and bass and assists with vocals. His weighty riffs are simple and no-frills but function like the demonic heartbeats of the songs, pulsing and pounding at the center of the bloodbathery. His minimalist “Bolt Thrower submerged in hot garbage” playing style creates a kind of hypnotic dirge that keeps you sitting there basking in the grime and decay. Paweł Karaś provides the one-of-a-kind vomit riot sounds and at no point does he sound healthy, alive, or human. This is some grisly subterranean shit right here, full of reverb and studio effects and it will rub you the wrong way in all the right ways. He even outdoes Cryptworm’s Tibor Hanyi for most severe throat torture, and that’s no easy feat. Really disgusting and enjoyable stuff!
Moribound won’t be everybody’s cup of pus chowder, and Eternal Rot are certainly not the Pox Romana of death-doom, but if you enjoy the rancid flavors of swampy cesspooling, there’s a lot of poo-crust to dig through here. Think of it as a short night at the chopera if you will, and this will be broken out at the House of Steel the next time overstaying guests aren’t getting the hint about vacating the premises. I recommend trying Moribound after a full course of antibiotics because this particular batch of dead goat ass milk might be spoiled.
Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Memento Mori
Websites: eternalrot.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/eternalrot
Releases Worldwide: July 24th, 2023
