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PUSTULANT FLESH
Gurgling Pustulence

Extremely Rotten Productions (2025)
Rating: 7/10

The congealed waves of death metal seem never ending as this time it is Denmark’s Pustulant Flesh who bestows upon us their bile-soaked bath scum. The band formed originally as Fetus Deletus in 2022 and then changed their name to the equally ridiculous Putrid Abortion the same year. In 2023 the moniker Pustulant Flesh came to fruition as did EP Beyond Lobotomy.

The fact that this new album, Gurgling Pustulence, is only nine minutes longer than the 11 minute EP is a bit disappointing, and so is the inclusion of the songs ‘Cadaver Creation’ and ‘Beyond Lobotomy’, as they featured previous. So, you basically get 20 minutes of festering death metal dripping with mucky riffage, garbage can drumming and vocals from the depths of a diseased diaphragm.

There’s nothing fancy here, just a soupy bottom-feeding of Swedish-styled splatter n’ roll. The riffs are good, catchy and yucky, building to manky macabre tirades before slowing to engaging heaps of soppy compost being thrown in your face. Flashes of Carcass trickle from the intestinal wounds resulting in some tasty if somewhat predictable death-grind mulch.

Maybe the guys should take themselves more serious than the goonish gore club they present as, because in spite of the heavy nods towards the 90s Euro slop, this album is definitely a marked improvement on the more primitive EP. With songs such as ‘March Of The Ravenous Dead’, with its mucus-coated drag, and the slurping gloom of ‘Carrion Offspring’, there’s a genuine talent lurking within the churning cauldron of pus.

There’s nostalgia too as ‘Dødsangst’ bridges the gap between early Napalm Death and the musical equivalent to being thrashed to oblivion by an alligator. Sure, there isn’t anything here I’ve not heard before, and labels such as Iron Fortress Records have been more than sadistic enough to regularly puke this style of metal out for a while. However, there’s something enjoyable about engaging with a boggy beast that seems content to write in its own squalor.

As the closing title chunk shows, this is a band stoned on its own zombie juice. Bereft of any energy, even with the hastier gushes, and with no distinguishing features, Pustulant Flesh is the sound of suppuration; a groggy, featureless experiment in banality which somehow proves to be rewarding.

Neil Arnold

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