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.

You can probably guess what Caustic Vomit and their debut demo “Festering Odes to Deformity” sounds like. Their craggy doom/death is dark, filthy, and it thinks your liver looks tasty. And with punishing subterranean gloom in mind, don't expect your worldview to change, but do expect your innards to be violated. “Immured in Devouring Rot” gives us several sections of monolithical chugging followed with some slow-mo blasting, which is the template for what follows. We are pushed along at a quicker clip during most of ‘Churning Bowel Tunnels,’ which works its way into crusty rhythms and some neckbreaking grooves. And for the lovingly titled ‘Once Coffinated Malformities’ the group employs lead guitars more prominently, resulting in heightened sense of drama. I reckon that those moments are the highlight of the record for me. Another positive is that the band doesn’t linger on for too long with any riff, instead choosing to show us that they have plenty of good ones to spare. Of special mention are the vocals, which are pretty creepy in that they sound like a whisper instead of a growl. I suffer from sleep paralysis, and said vocals are not far off from when the commonly described ‘evil presence’ (lurking just out of sight) speaks softly but malevolently into your ear as you struggle to move. But sleep paralysis never stops being novel, while Caustic Vomit does not seek to be. Keeping this at EP length is also great idea, because it leaves the listener hungry for more. I think unless you are planning to create a totally awe-inspiring recording, a half hour seems pretty reasonable and non-portentous.

Originally Published for Melalegion Megazine

You can see the red blood and clotted organs flung high and wet in the daylight of the cemetery where the fiend and the defiler alike claw mud and scrape away at the freshly buried coffin snacks they’d hunt. The shrieks come from holes in the lungs where rotted gases escape, spraying wetness and furiously clicking beetles down their tattered bloody clothes. Cars crash around you and your own blood pours over your eyes as day turns to moonlit night and you awake, blurry eyed and hungry for death. Smell nothing, taste nothing, see nothing, because all you’ve left is your ears and towards the slapping thud of meat against car door as primal ecstasy bellows forth a spray of acid puke onto the crowd. They’ve all gathered here today to see the sentient pile awake and crush the crypts with ancient doomed-death so few could conjure. Stringing your bass with your own intestines and tuning by ear all compatriots gather atop a ditch full of bones and too-rotten flesh to witness this half hour of ‘Festering Odes to Deformity’, a cryptic set of three morbid sledges spirited alive through electrocution and great malignant curse. From St. Petersburg, Russia you’ve been resurrected unto diabolical rampage, an outpouring of Caustic Vomit for the ages.

If you were a fucked up dork for most all of the 2000’s like I was you might’ve spent the decade hunkered down ripping through every death metal demo the internet could conjure from the annals of extreme metal history and it’d seem that many tribes would connect worldwide in service to these old, rotten and decaying arts. Old school be worshiped but the constructs be damned, the sound today is defined by filth and doom and above all else a mountain of death and carrion to stink up the night. Caustic Vomit fit in quite well with the Maggot Stomp (Rotted, Abraded, Gutless) sort of fare, the sort of bands that’re beguiling the Blood Harvests (Cavurn, Crematory Stench, Mortiferium) and 20 Buck Spins (Fetid, Ossuarium, Bone Sickness) of today with ancient rotted life that is appealing for its simple filthiness and effective doom n’ punch death metal style a la Autopsy. With a logo that looks like Cemetery‘s (Sweden) and a sound that’d probably scare the pants off an old Gorement tape these Russian fellows clearly know the kind of raw, fucked-up mud they need to bring to stand out. They’re a bit slower than you might expect and when they do crank it you’re getting those punkish undertones thanks to thier love of Mythic and Derkéta and they’re not shy about name-dropping Rippikoulu, Divine Eve and Disembowelment for good measure.

Excited as you may be by those references they’re not necessarily as cleverly arranged as some of those groups, though the love for Rippikoulu‘s 1992 demo is clear (minus the snare sound) as is the simpler jog of Derkéta. The sludgy bellowing of Cavurn and the brutal ‘old school’ presence of Mortiferium are reasonable comparisons and you’d almost think this was a pacific northwest death/doom band if not for their well-contained rehearsal space acoustics. Much as I love the sound and the general pacing of these three ~10 minute songs Caustic Vomit are at their most interesting when they speed up as their slower doom metal riff game isn’t (wasn’t) yet up to the level of a Spectral Voice or Ceremonium demo quite yet. I’d kind of bite my tongue on that during “Once Coffined Memories” but the other two tracks do drag in terms of ideas when things get outwardly sluggish. I understand the effect and the influences they’re going for, and love those too, but this band is just one weird keyboardist (Castle) or extra lead guitarist away from being a true freak that’d stand out in the myriad of old-and-new names I’ve thrown around thus far. I’m still on board if they stick with this sound and style though some measure of weird would really put things over the edge.

No doubt I’m months too late in mentioning this early 2019 limited tape release of this 2018 demo, it sold out incredibly fast back in February… Nonetheless, ‘Festering Odes to Deformity’ has been kicking around in my head ever since and deserves some attention for the love of death/doom metal that isn’t trendy filth that’d recreate ancient methodology fashioned into somewhat memorable and always brutal pieces. Moderately high recommendation. For preview I’d suggest “Once Coffined Memories” as that was my own personal fix for coming back to this tracklist but they’re all effective in representing the demo as a whole.

Attribution: https://grizzlybutts.com/2019/05/30/caustic-vomit-festering-odes-to-deformity-2019-review/