Festering Odes to Deformity

Out of the icy waters of the Neva river in St Petersburg comes - well I'd be running a mile scared too if the thing that arose turned out to be the corpse of one Grigori Rasputin - but no, out comes this Russian doom / death quartet, sure to be a household name the world over, calling itself Caustic Vomit. We may wonder at their choice of name but there is no need to wonder at the music the name suits: it is as filthy and slimy and icky as all get out in the world of sludge death doom, and of course the world it was ejected from with much force and foul-smelling splatter is a dark one where cold-blooded amphibian mutant monsters mooch about in murky mephitic swamps waiting for victims stumbling on the banks, blinded by thick corrosive swamp fumes. OK, OK, maybe that's laying it on thickly.

On this demo, the four musicians plough their way through three tracks of thick burning slurry of indeterminate origins, starting with "Immured in Devouring Rot", which itself begins with an instrumental of droning feedback and effects that by itself might be a major highlight of the entire recording, and continuing with crust-laden sludge topped with a murmuring monster vocal prepped by a load of gastroliths piled into the stomach and extending right up the oesophagus to the top of the throat. The odd blast-beat burst accompanied by frenzied guitar bubble soloing highlights the song's otherwise slow and sometimes chunky rhythms and the downright indecipherable mutterings that pass for singing. "Churning Bowel Tunnels" is a bit faster and less constipated than you might expect from the title: lively riffs and scrabbly guitaring, interchangeable with slabs of crushed gastroliths working through the intestines, are exercising a laxative effect on the speed of the music. This is a really solid and meaty track that meanders through every fold and diverticule of its labyrinth and gets it all out with deranged guitar scrabble flourishes and bass grind. The final track is a slower and more leisurely affair with passages of groove-tastic head-banging rifferama and melodic dark Gothic lead-guitar soloing mixed along with epic droning doom crush sections.

Beneath the decay, the thick crust and the acrid smell of splatter in the swamp monster's vocal emanations is a surprising range of music stretching from bone-crushing slabs of drone doom metal, straight-out head-banging and sinister Gothic lead-guitar instrumental melodrama to a brief bout of ambient drone noise experimentation. The production is clear, almost ringingly clean in parts, and the silence between parts of tracks is blacker than black. Demented lead guitar solo eruptions help vary the music and provide contrast with their lightness and electric quality. Probably the one thing that could be improved upon is the limited vocal range: listeners are entitled to expect the odd belch or two of thick green goo shooting from the speakers, hitting the walls and burning holes in them thereafter.

For some odd reason Caustic Vomit reminds me a bit of Finland's Ride for Revenge, even though both swamp-dwelling bands are really not much alike in style and their use of atmosphere. Fans of Ride for Revenge might like to check out the Russian band just over the other side of the Finnish border. These fellas are definitely a band to watch out for in the future.