This album features a cover photo that you cannot unsee once you've laid your eyes upon it, I guarantee that. I also guarantee that if you enjoy some grindcore-meets-death metal, then this band is for you to inspect!

The vibe is straight from early 1990s. With the name like Pathology Stench, one would expect some goregrind, but this is closer to Napalm Death 'Harmony Corruption' (1990) way than old Carcass; not gory, but sociological. But it has that different East European aura to it.

One should not expect some to-the-hilt fast grinding here, even though this gets fast, too. Some tremolo riffs and fast fret-board runs can be heard among palm-muted heavy ones as well as groovy stop & go riffs, and there are interesting lead guitar and solo work. The song compositions are often anything but straight verse-bridge-chrous-repeat. There are skank beats, D-beats, groovy beats and double kick drumming, even some blasting, and tempos change unpredictably. They had time to hone the songwriting as it took about five years for the band to get their debut album out.

The vocals department is mostly fine, if a tad flaccid. The main styles are low-ish growls and barking, and while not bad, they do lack some real power. But then there's also this... gnome voice, which highly reminds of modern day Chris Barnes. All new Six Feet Under fans, you cannot miss this! The vocalization isn't precise to tempos, but feel more free-roaming. The lyrics (them more conceivable ones) are as incisive as they were 25 years ago: Societies pushing their citizens down, abusing them without any second thought.

The production also misses some power, but still it manages to sound pretty aggressive and blistering. Each element of the music can be heard fine and dandily, so points for it, and it is quite bassy. The performances are good, and even the vocals fit in after all. The songs aren't catchiest one can listen to, but they are interesting and offer hours of fun is grinding death metal of yore is sought after.

Rating: 7+ (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
06/12/2022 10:51