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SMOULDERING TOMB
Maledictions Upon The Wretched EP

Self-released (2025)
Rating: 7.5/10

Another UK independent release has emerged from the death metal underground, this time in the form of Smouldering Tomb. I used to live in Kent, in the south-east of England and would regularly take trips to Brighton. Little did I realise that something was festering in the waters of East Sussex, the result being this four-song debut EP that swarms you like a shoal of hungry piranhas.

Led by the ravenous outbursts of Marianne Hayes, this is the sort of ungodly bubbling mulch that can only thicken the already congealed UK death metal soup. Just a handful of tracks here, all of which suffocate with a maddening intensity; a myriad of sodden blasts and guttural echoes blustering through cavernous portals of pus. The riffs of this entity are colossal flabby geysers of billowing rot and puke, although at times there are slower Mortician-styled chugs, but either way it’s very much indicative of today’s death metal climate.

There’s a lot of pace here; ‘Morbific Human Swarm’ is a violent onslaught of butchery driven in barbaric fashion by Hywel Payne’s percussive rushes. Even the slower, churning passages boast that thick layer of squalid, down tuned vileness akin to being sucked into a quicksand nightmare.

Those anguish inducing whirlwind formulas are never far away though. ‘Diet Of Worms’ genuinely sounds like a washing machine has just coughed up its own innards; a harrowing hammering of riff, bass and percussion. ‘Subduer Of All’ begins with a subtle tease of synthesizer before the archaic sludge oozes to the soundtrack of its own fading heartbeat. It’s monolithic and pungent in equal measure, wading in the depths of its own miry gunk.

Smouldering Tomb have mastered the art of creating a brand of mulch-infused death slop. It’s not clever, just rank – so tuck in.

Neil Arnold

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