Dec 202022
 

It’s the time of year when many of us are reflecting on what we heard in 2022, sorting it out, making lists, reducing our bank account balances… but for the moment I’m thinking about a musical plague that infected me last year for which a cure hasn’t yet been developed.

That plague, Crepitation Of Phlegethon, was the full-length debut of Occulsed. It ushered listeners into a world of terrors, a world created from sounds that spawned electrifying visions of horror and disease, of madness and mayhem, and of blood-freezing intrusions from spectral realms. As I wrote at the time we premiered it:

“It takes a rare kind of talent to make an album like this one, a death metal album that creates such a viscerally disturbing impact, one that preys upon its listeners’ most deep-seated fears and does so in such thrilling and paradoxically enthralling fashion…. It’s all rotten to the core and as creepy as confinement in a coffin filled with wriggling maggots…. The moods change as well, though almost all the moods are ghastly. The music is both predatory and hopeless, noxious and deranged, horrifyingly imperious and seemingly gleeful in its deviant revels”.

Where in the world did that plague come from? How was it spawned, how did it grow into such a mal-formed but unforgettable monstrosity? We have answers today. Continue reading »

Sep 172021
 

 

We invite you to enter a world of terrors, a world created from sound that spawns electrifying visions of horror and disease, of madness and mayhem, and of blood-freezing intrusions from spectral realms. We invite you experience Crepitation Of Phlegethon.

Through several previous track premieres we’ve already teased what lies within this new album by Atlanta-based Occulsed, but now we reveal the full album in all its macabre glory on the day of its release by Everlasting Spew Records. As someone famously said when contemplating the Brundlefly, “Be afraid, be very afraid”. Continue reading »

Sep 022021
 

 

We’re still banging the drum and yelling at the top of our lungs about Occulsed, with this being our third (but not the last) premiere of music from their debut album Crepitation Of Phlegethon. We’ve previously remarked about the intriguing wordplay reflected in the album and song titles, which have repeatedly sent us scurrying to the dictionary, and it’s true again with today’s new song: “Concupiscence Of Frenzied Humors

For those who might have missed our previous premieres, shame on you this latest track vividly displays the band’s talents for creating electrifying visions of horror and disease, of madness and mayhem, and of blood-freezing intrusions from spectral realms. Continue reading »

Aug 092021
 

 

In what other genre of music but death metal could adjectives like “grotesque”, “putrid”, “abysmal”, and “abhorrent” be used as compliments? None come to mind. But of course even in the realm of death metal those adjectives are complimentary only when the music has other qualities that make it viscerally exciting and memorable. Simply wallowing in a choking vat of formless excrement and vomit does not alone become pleasurable, even for people whose tastes run hard to the more disgusting offshoots of old school death.

Which brings us back to Occulsed, and the second song we’re ghoulishly happy to premiere from their debut album Crepitation of Phlegethon in the run-up to its September 17 release by Everlasting Spew Records. The music of Occulsed merits all those adjectives above, but it’s also so well-constructed and maliciously well-realized that it becomes addictive (as well as foul). Continue reading »

Jul 292021
 

 

What is an “unction“? Well, it is the anointing of someone with oil or ointment as a religious rite, or perhaps as a symbol of the investiture as a monarch. In somewhat more archaic terms, it is a treatment with a medicinal oil or ointment.

But here’s a harder question, which sent us scurrying into research: What does “muliebrous” mean? Our investigation tells us that it’s an adjective which refers to something that has the qualities or characteristics of a woman, e.g., something feminine.

As for what a “muliebrous broth” might be, we’ll leave that to your own imagination.

Now that we’ve satisfied your curiosity and improved your vocabulary, let’s turn to the business at hand, and the business at hand is a filthy discharge of clobbering and eviscerating madness as rendered by the Atlanta-area death metal band Occulsed, whose debut album Crepitation of Phlegethon (you’ll have to look up those words yourself) will be vomited forth by Everlasting Spew Records on September 17th. Continue reading »