As much as I rag on abound the endless crop of amateur metal bands who clog up the servers that power Bandcamp, the platform isn’t completely for nothing. If you scroll through long enough, you’ll come across a real jewel in the rough, like Extinguished. Signed to the almost always reputable Caligari Records, Extinguished have been terrorizing the Finnish underground scene since the year of the plague, 2020, which is rather appropriate considering the type of death metal they churn out. A few years after releasing their aptly titled debut demo, Vomitous Manifestations (2020), the band has returned with a new EP entitled Foul Stench Adoration.
Keeping it simple and straightforward, Foul Stench Adoration consists of three brand new songs, as well as some brief gory riff-fests that serve as the release’s respective intro and outro. Said bookends are a rather welcome departure from the usual horror synth/sound collage intros/outros we’ve become accustomed to on extreme metal releases. Part of me wonders why they just weren’t thrown on as part of the respective songs they precede and succeed, but that’s for Extinguished to know and me to ponder in this here review. What I do know for certain is that Foul Stench Adoration is NOT for the weak of heart or stomach.
The opening “Mesmerizing Placenta” kicks things off in truly repulsive fashion, boasting a murky production job and lower than hell gutturals. It’s almost like fellow Finns, Demilich, trying their hand at Autopsy worship. It’s bleak, doomy, and utterly gore-tastic, with some bizarre riffs thrown in for good measure. The brutal title track follows, starting like the musical equivalent of a bludgeoning sledgehammer before turning into a monolithic slab of Mental Funeral worship. Painfully slow death/doom is contrasted with blasting death insanity, resulting in a cut that’s as chaotic as it is lethal.
The closing “Macerate and Masticate” sees the vomit-inducing grooves of Autopsy yet again colliding with the winding, leftfield riffage and musicality of Demilich, making for a throwback banger sounding straight out of the early ’90s. Now when I draw these comparisons to Demilich, the last thing I want conjured to mind is a band of trend-hopping hipsters making chic death metal for the Pitchfork-reading crowd. No, these freaks take the most obscure aspects of those cult legends and bastardize them to create their own gory sound. In other words, weird, but not weird enough to alienate purists like you and I.
Foul Stench Adoration stinks for all the right reasons. It’s a cut above the usual OSDM worship fare, boasting enough memorable riffs, grooves, and hooks to warrant a full length. Perhaps we’ll be treated to one further down the line? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, as the members are also busy in bands/projects such as Sickness and Hammer of Cain. As I was discussing with a friend outside a Nunslaughter show this weekend, you gotta love it when a town’s “scene” consists of the same half a dozen guys in different configurations making up twenty-something different bands.
7 out of 10
Label: Caligari Records
Genre: Death Metal
For fans of: Autopsy, Demilich, Undergang
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