{"id":105124,"date":"2025-06-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/?p=105124"},"modified":"2025-07-16T14:12:57","modified_gmt":"2025-07-16T13:12:57","slug":"ep-review-smouldering-tomb-maledictions-upon-the-wretched","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/ep-review-smouldering-tomb-maledictions-upon-the-wretched\/","title":{"rendered":"SMOULDERING TOMB – Maledictions Upon The Wretched EP (2025) | Album \/ EP Reviews @ Metal Forces Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"

SMOULDERING TOMB
\nMaledictions Upon The Wretched EP<\/strong><\/span>
\n\"\"
\nSelf-released (2025)<\/span>
\nRating: 7.5\/10<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s very much indicative of today\u2019s death metal climate.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of pace here; \u2018Morbific Human Swarm\u2019 is a violent onslaught of butchery driven in barbaric fashion by Hywel Payne\u2019s percussive rushes. Even the slower, churning passages boast that thick layer of squalid, down tuned vileness akin to being sucked into a quicksand nightmare.<\/p>\n

Those anguish inducing whirlwind formulas are never far away though. \u2018Diet Of Worms\u2019 genuinely sounds like a washing machine has just coughed up its own innards; a harrowing hammering of riff, bass and percussion. \u2018Subduer Of All\u2019 begins with a subtle tease of synthesizer before the archaic sludge oozes to the soundtrack of its own fading heartbeat. It\u2019s monolithic and pungent in equal measure, wading in the depths of its own miry gunk.<\/p>\n

Smouldering Tomb have mastered the art of creating a brand of mulch-infused death slop. It\u2019s not clever, just rank \u2013 so tuck in.<\/p>\n

Neil Arnold<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,5938],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-ep-reviews","category-smouldering-tomb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105125,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105124\/revisions\/105125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.metalforcesmagazine.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}