I’ll let you in on a secret – reviewers hate getting albums like Mature Necropsy (Kaotoxin) in their to-do pile.  Not because they’re bad (far from it – it is an absolute master-class in what it does), but because there’s little to say about them.  If you think Symphonies of Sickness (Earache) -era Carcass with a thick dose of 90’s American Death Metal is a good idea, absolutely buy this album right now.

No?  I’m not allowed to just stop there?

Okay, journalistic trick to fill space number 1 – background details.  Putrid Offal are a French Grind/Death band who put out a series of well-regarded  EPs, splits and demos in the early 90’s but failed to achieve more than marginal underground success and vanished within a few years.  After returning in 2014 with an EP and compilation, they’ve finally put out their debut full-length, only twenty-five years since they started, consisting entirely of previously released tracks, rerecorded in 2015.

Rerecording older material is generally frowned upon and rightly so, but Putrid Offal 2015 lend these songs not only a sharp, savage modern production – a great example of how a skilled producer can give an Extreme Metal band clarity and power without stripping away any of the dirt or ugliness that they need – but the total confidence and focus of men who are twenty-five years older and know exactly what they’re doing.

What does it sound like? The press release mentions “Early-Carcass, General Surgery, Necrony, Pathologist, Dead, Cock And Ball Torture”… so Carcass, then?  Like General Surgery they hybridise their Symphonies Of Sickness worship with a thick vein of Death Metal, but unlike their Swedish peers they turn to the thick, suffocating gut-punch of classic American Death Metal rather than the punk-fuelled charge of Entombed. Don’t expect to hear anything new here (even the playful touches of keyboards and chanting that appear amongst the violence on several tracks have been done before), but I haven’t heard it done this well in a long time.

So… If you think Symphonies…-era Carcass with a thick dose of 90’s American Death Metal is a good idea, absolutely buy this album.  Will that do now?

8.0/10

Putrid Offal on Facebook

RICHIE HR