This Belgian band’s moniker pretty much sums up the sonic output of these ten grisly tracks on their debut. Their old school filth riddled approach is a voracious submersion into a world of gruesome riffing amidst their veritable onslaught on the rhythm section. Coupled to that you have a vocal display as hideous and monstrous as anything you’re likely to hear within the genre.

Everything about this album is saturated in the stench of acts from death metal’s primitive offerings of the late 80s and early 90s, but what these Belgians inject into all the songs is some fine guitar work courtesy of the exceptional lead breaks that you may find wandering around a technical death metal band. Opener ‘Metaphysical Iconoclasm’ marks the album proficiently, its speed insertions and battering abrasive styling is wild yet highly controlled and continues into ‘Bloodstained Tears’. The whip cracking snare work feels like it’s leaving raw weals with every hit as the songs catchy riff inserts itself into your head like a parasite.

I’d never say that this album offers anything new or inventive aside of the guitar work but when the conviction is this murderous and this intense then you can’t fault it. ‘Embedded In Hollowness’ is a short, rabid and incendiary affair delivering chunky groove infested riffs situated within the avalanche of drum work. Gritty and pumping with tons of double kick patterns the song unleashes an astronomical deathly demolition you can’t fail to be taken along with. Same can be applied to ‘Psychotic Ecstasy’ which brandishes a slight off kilter, even weird, guitar run that might even be bass as I wasn’t actually sure due to the toning afforded. With a catchy bounce and plenty of tempo dynamics the song is addictively heavy when it plunges into a crawling abyss.

There’ll be plenty of references to old Swedeath players with this release but these Belgians don’t settle for just that, preferring to hook up this style with a brutal clinical approach as on ‘Verminous Flood’. Linking into the last couple of tracks is the short violence of ‘Resurrected In Chaos’, its snapping rabidity typifies the feral nature of this album as ‘Doomsday Prayer’ slashes into the listener with a piercing guitar hook that has a sense of menace right before the whole tune diverts into a more atmospheric bearing. The pacing drops with it, unveiling a crunching dragging segment enhanced by that guitar work I’ve mentioned few times now. Closing the release is ‘Blood Unforeseen’ which returns the album to literal bulldozing momentum, its ferocity connected to the bellowing vocals producing that inhuman primitiveness we all love about death metal; there couldn’t be a better song to conclude the album with.

The ever-growing cesspool of sewerage death metal is at the point of overflowing as this Belgian act adds its formidable and considerable weight to this expanding lake of stench and is recommended to all fans of old school death metal.

(8.5/10 Martin Harris)

https://www.facebook.com/slitheringdecay

https://testimonyrecords.bandcamp.com/album/slithering-decay-aeons-untold