After two high quality short-form releases, French death/crust act Death Whore erupt fully onto the scene with full length debut Blood Washes Everything Away. A co-production by Duality Records, Crypt of Dr. Gore, Specific Recordings, Hecatombe Records, and No Good to Anyone Productions, the band from Nancy unleashes thirty-five minutes of deeply unpleasant sonic punishment in the nastiest possible way.

A record that exposes the cruelty and alienation of the modern world as well as displaying a boiling contempt for capitalism, before a single horribly distorted power chord is even struck, you know this is going to be a far from pleasant listening experience. 

Opener “Inhaling the Dead” is like landing face-first on concrete. A thick, mulchy production suffocates and stifles, getting under your skin from the very start. The pummelling groove of “Noyé Dans Le Sang” (translated Drowned in Blood) helps make the song every bit as cheery as it sounds before the slow, crushing death doom of “Vile Display of Repugnance” delivers blasts of speed and an utterly brutal breakdown.

After a deeply unsettling intro and a surging morass of riffs and blastbeats, “Infernal Terror Machine” finds the band channelling their inner Cannibal Corpse. The disturbing mental imagery of “Chainsaw Alley” is heightened by some insidiously creeping four-string work from bassist Antoine Duffour, and that gnawingly unpleasant feeling increases again on “12 Worm Wounds” thanks to samples from Lucio Fulci horror classic The Beyond, and a truly horrifying vocal from frontman Fabien W. Furter.

If “None Are Forgotten” is beyond brutal then you have to ask yourself what the absolute fuck does that make “Motorthroat ’79?” Total and unapologetic crust punk annihilation, I suppose. “You Owe Me A Living” delivers more of the same, drummer Pierre ‘Gorgor’ Schaffner an epileptic octopus one moment and absolute metronomic precision the next while “Savage Aesthetic Revenge” switches between exhausting speed and blazing power grooves. Subtlety be damned. “I Went To See My Grave” finishes the job in much the same way as blunt force trauma, a punishing four minutes of slow, methodical torture ensuring you’ll never be quite the same again.

One of the most oppressively exhilarating albums of the year, Blood Washes Everything Away certainly won’t win any awards for subtlety, but it will unquestionably cause severe injuries in the pit. A raging, unstoppable Gallic gargantua intent only on total and utter devastation. Get in its way at your peril.

Buy the album here:
https://deathwhore.bandcamp.com/album/blood-washes-everything-away

8 / 10
GARY ALCOCK
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