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OSSUARY
Abhorrent Worship

Darkness Shall Rise Productions / Me Saco Un Ojo (2025)
Rating: 9/10

There’s no doubt that for the last decade or so that Madison, Wisconsin-based death metallers Ossuary have been one of the bands to watch. After being slightly underwhelmed by the Corpus Offal debut (Corpus Offal) but buoyed by the latest Morbific album (Bloom Of The Abnormal Flesh), Ossuary sets the bar at some height. To make sure I wasn’t too excited by this opus I made sure I gave it at least five listens in order to settle in to its groggy confines. Now on the 13th spin I can confidently state that Abhorrent Worship is one of the albums of the year.

I often wonder when the death metal genre is going to hit a brick wall, but there always seems to be a band which crops up to renew my interest. There’s nothing original here, but then again originality within the genre isn’t easy, but as with any quality death metal platter it’s all about the delivery. Ossuary, in spite of sharing their moniker with quite a few bands, past and present, have undoubtedly mastered the art of concocting squalid evil on record. Even with those familiar gusty riffs and dank, dismal percussive flurries it’s the sort of cavernous cacophony that gets right into your lungs.

The vocals of guitarist Izzi Plunkett seep and seethe with such sinister aplomb, her tone a sordid leakage into your ears. ‘Volitional Entropy’ unravels like a squirming black-death nightmare, fiendishly sneering in its own grease as Izzi laps away at bile and pus, dragging the whole fetid compost into a grim doomy dungeon. The same can also be said for ‘Inborn Scourge Unbound’, a slithering, menacing and savagely archaic dump of sepulchral tumult that crawls along the barrel bottom like some oily parasite feasting on the dregs of death.

‘Forsaken Offerings (To The Doomed Spirit)’ continues supplying layers of muck and malevolence, the vocals reaching into the foulest pits of slime as Izzi throws up her innards over her own silted axe work. This is death-doom at its most rank and slurry-filled, a toxic bog of oozing emulsion as ‘Instinctual Prostration’ creeps from dormancy into a despicable black tidal riff given extra cold snaps by Izzi’s wicked snarl. ‘Barren Lamentation’ rounds this cauldron off like a wet shovel of dirt filling up your orifices.

Ossuary drowns you in a sodden smog, heavy on the chest and stinking with its festering fumes and yet it’s not the usual swamp fest though, leave that quagmire death slobber to others. Abhorrent Worship is more of a descent into some subterranean bowel that’s lined with the sediment of souls. Worship this or be doomed.

Neil Arnold

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