It’s not often that we’ve premiered two songs from the same release three years apart (well, actually we’ve never done that before), but in the case of Blasphemous Putrefaction‘s Festering Plagues EP, that’s what we’re now doing.
You see, this EP was first released on cassette tape (by Death In Pieces) back in 2019. It was this German duo’s second release, following the Abominable Premonition demo two years earlier, and we greedily premiered a song from the EP named “Grief” shortly before the release.
Since then Blasphemous Putrefaction have released a debut album — 2020’s Prelude to Perversion — via Dunkelheit Produktionen. And that album made such a fabulously disgusting impact that it’s no wonder someone decided to reissue Festering Plagues, which is what the Crawling Chaos label will do on October 28th, capturing the EP in a CD edition for the first time.
So, strictly speaking, the song we’re presenting today isn’t a premiere, but more like a re-introduction, though it’s highly likely it will indeed be a first-listen for many of you.
The song you’re about to hear, “Weathered“, is the middle song of three tracks on the EP. To put it in context:
Gruesome chanting and the boom of a ritual drum-beat opens the first song, “Resurrection of the Dead“, and that leads into a monstrous piece of slaughtering that moves between two gears. On the one hand, the track proceeds at a galloping gait, and deploys riffing with a nasty, down-tuned tone that’s so abrasive and distorted it chokes the senses, as well as squealing, lunatic leads and horrid roars. In the other gear, the pace slows, and the band ruthlessly administer big, clanging chords that are allowed to reverberate in putrid, oppressive tones, like the lingering stink of rotting flesh translated into sound, as well as a seething, searing lead that conjures visions of wriggling maggots on fire.
And so, the song gags and drags the listener into a charnel pit with its foul and hopeless atmosphere, fractures the spine with its remorseless pounding, and engages in ravaging mayhem.
“Weathered” follows, and it’s immediately more chaotic, propelled by rapidly hammering and furiously thundering drumwork and frenzies of sadistic guitar mauling. It’s a gnarly piece of viciousness, but like the EP’s opener, “Weathered” also transforms into a slow, lurching, plague-carrying, horror and spits its dementia through a scalding, freakish solo.
And then you’ll come to the closer “Grief“, which is the song we premiered three years ago. After a thuggish opening, it ramps up into a berserker rampage laced with extravagant braying tones and long dragging chords, augmented by bursts of that by-now-familiar fret-burning lunacy, along with manic drum fills that boom and tumble.
On Feverish Plagues, Blasphemous Putrefaction weren’t out to reinvent any wheels, but they didn’t need to. Their devotion to rotten metal of death is unquestioned, and their skill in presenting it was obvious even then, and even more obvious now. As we wrote three years ago, and it’s still true, if you’re in the mood for truly disgusting and fearsome death metal that’s primitive and raw, you’ve come to the right place with this EP.
As mentioned above, Crawling Chaos will release the EP in a CD edition with a cardboard sleeve, as well as digitally, and there’s a patch available too. Check the links below for pre-orders.
PRE-ORDER:
https://thecrawlingchaosrecords.bandcamp.com/album/festering-plagues-ep
https://thecrawlingchaos-records.de/PREORDER-BLASPHEMOUS-PUTREFACTION-FESTERING-PLAGUES-EP-PATCH
FOLLOW BLASPHEMOUS PUTREFACTION:
https://www.facebook.com/BlasphemousPutrefaction/