Putrid Monstrosity - Demo 2017

by Elijah Chamberlain

https://putridmonstrosity.bandcamp.com/releases

The majority of my time spent on social media is on Instagram. I scroll through my Explore page and look at memes or check out pages I find appealing; usually being bands.

Occasionally after posting on my account, the odd like and follow will come through from bands expanding their outreach.

I’ll give them a listen, usually follow back and watch for new material as time goes on. These bands are usually from the United States and Europe, but the other day, one follow caught my eye. Putrid Monstrosity, a slamming death metal band, liked a few of my posts and followed me. Naturally I checked out their profile and discovered that they hailed from Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is a mere four hours away from Yer Scene headquarters in Saint John.

That piqued my interest, as I can say that I have not heard of many extreme metal bands around my area, give or take a handful. I gave their demo, which was released in December 2017, a good listen and was pleasantly surprised at the solid material that they came up with.

The demo opens with a Mortician cover of Blown To Pieces, which they nailed to absolute perfection, with Hassan's vocals emulating Will Rahmer's vocals wonderfully. The remaining two tracks on the demo are originals, and are both jam packed with slammy goodness.

Inspiration For Masturbation opens with nasty riffs and Hassan once more proving his vocal merit with some disgusting gutturals. The track isn't too long, at just over three minutes, but it does its job well, reminding me of bands like Guttural Slug in terms of riffage and, well, slams if you will.

The track ends with a sample from an interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger. I don’t want to give away the great laugh I had when I heard it so I will leave it to you to listen for yourself. The last track, Forest Frenzy, brings more slams to the table. The band uses greater amounts of blast beats I find, during this track, and overall, the track seems to be focused on lower guitar tones and vocal ranges. This adds to the crushing brutality the track brings, slowing down and speeding right back up just when the riff gets to its nastiest.

The track ends abruptly in my opinion, but regardless, it is a great listen for sure. Hassan's vocals are a focus point for me, as they aren't what I would expect from a generic slamming death metal band. Usually they are unintelligible as they come, often in the form of grunts essentially. This is not the case with PM, however, as they’re much clearer, while still maintaining the brutal death metal aspect of the rest of the band. I find it refreshing from what I'm used to hearing from bands like Acranius. I get a Katalpesy vibe from his vocals to be quite frank, just with less phlegm and more rasp.

Overall, the demo is very solid, and with new material hopefully on the horizon, I'm looking forward to hearing more from a semi-local band. If you are a fan of death metal in general, I highly recommend checking these guys out, and if you are in the Atlantic Canada area, go check them out at RadStorm August 25th!