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LAST RETCH
Abject Cruelty

Time To Kill (2025)
Rating: 8/10

With a very different style of cover art from 2022 debut Sadism And Severed Heads, the sophomore outing from Ontario, Canada-based deathsters Last Retch seems very in keeping with the current crop of kaleidoscopic horrors which numerous death metal bands are splattering their album covers with.

Last Retch keep things relatively simple with their brand of bludgeoning, but if you stare at the cover long enough the experience might feel more Technicolor than it actually is. Even so, there are some truly heinous juggernaut riffs on display here with the ploughing ‘In The Polder They Reek’ summing up this album with its grinding consistency.

This is a genuinely heavy record, guttural and bellowing in every aspect as the title track steadily churns. The drums here sound like the Grim Reaper knocking on your front door. The Last Retch sound is somewhat wholesome, a thick mass of boiling gut liquid as ‘Beasley Meth Merchants’ echoes with dismal aplomb. It’s not sluggish by any means, but the whole composition seethes and swirls with mulchy decadence.

‘Oozing Pustules’ speaks for itself, a concealing melting pot of solidifying riffs and pestulant percussion marrying as one heaving compost heap. First and foremost this is death metal with gurgling grooves, the perfect soundtrack to digging wet graves as ‘Resinous Drip Of Decay’ persistently spurts its dirty lava into further pits of molten innards. Pace is rarely on the agenda with this album, as closer ‘Gatling Gun’ methodically flows with pungent fluidity.

Heavier than a truckload of wet manure, Abject Cruelty is another chugging lump of chunder for the sick bucket.

Neil Arnold

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