Review: Septage ‘Septic Worship’
Danish gurgling grind monstrosity Septage have finally birthed their debut full-length Septic Worship (Intolerant Spree Of Infesting Forms) after a number of highly regarded EPs and a brutal split with Hyperdontia.
It is out now through a collaboration between Extremely Rotten Productions, Dark Descent Records and Me Saco Un Ojo Records, who are handling cassette, CD and vinyl respectively. If their early work is any indicator of what you can expect, this is going to be wild.
When you open with a five-second blast of grind, then descend into uneasy scales of death metal guitar backed up by chaotic grind, gurgling vomiting vocals and a squealing solo, you know Septage mean business. There’s so much early Carcass all over this release, from the gurgling Jorden Raser Efter Menneskekød to the rabid Septic Deterioration And Decomposition (Lubricated In Feces For The Great Beyond) but the raw miasmic atmosphere and production is my favourite part.
Everything sounds so thick and murky, like it has been recorded inside a dead body. It seems spurious to say that the longer songs are my choice cuts, mainly because you have more time to absorb their carnage, but they also show that Septage have got a lot going on here.
one of the murkiest and most chaotic releases you’ll hear this year…
Anyone can attempt to recreate You Suffer, but the swaying uncomfortable guitar swagger that keeps cropping up in tracks like the title track or the sludgy drag of Bushmeat Banquet is a real filthy treat. Balls to the wall is great, but if you can layer in some little slower hooks for us to be lacerated by, all the better. Emetic Rites sounds like a lost Autopsy track from 1989, while closer Başkasının Kusmuğu even has a little Bolt Thrower at the start, before it explodes into filthy death grind again.
It’s only twenty minutes long, but Septage pour one hundred ideas into those twenty minutes, blend them into a death grind mush and then spew them back into your ears at a thousand decibels, creating one of the murkiest and most chaotic releases you’ll hear this year.
It’s like if Reek Of Putrefaction dared to have a tune or two, or early Napalm Death if they’d been recorded while their heads were being held under sewage. Septic Worship has taken all that promise shown in their EPs and somehow dialled it up even further. Ugly, violent and yet somehow really, really catchy, Septage are a revelation.
Label: Dark Descent Records | Extremely Rotten Productions | Me Saco Un Ojo Records
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram
Scribed by: Sandy Williamson
