Though they’ve been intermittently active by way of a couple songs here and there Melbourne, Australia-based death metal quintet Contaminated step back into full view here with their second full-length album nearly seven years beyond their first… all the while giving the impression not a moment’d passed. Sure the production values have improved and they lean into a moshable riff here and there but apart from the shocking choice of cover art ‘Celebratory Beheading‘ is a direct and proper follow-up to their debut, holding fast to their knack for blurring the lines between various shades of death, grind and doomed drift. Dense but not entirely thick-in-the-brain these folks’ve maintained their champion-level grip on the primitive and gnarly without ever having to get fully dumb with it.

Contaminated began circa 2013 as a solo death metal project from L.M. who’d soon land upon the perfectly gnarled-up headspace of their ‘Pestilential Decay‘ demo tape in 2014, a simple HM-2 buzzed approach to death metal with some heavy inspiration taken from sludge/doom metal and grindcore with some Incantation-esque atmosphere applied. From that point he’d been joined by members of Ignivomous, Embodied, Internal Rot and Headless Death for a 2015 promo which’d served as the and (early) Finnish death metal inspired preamble for their Blood Harvest released debut LP ‘Final Man‘ (2017), an album which’d expanded upon the grinding and muddy brutality of their formative releases and featured an explosive but still doom-prone sound thanks to its downtuned to hell and distorted bass guitar tone. The album cover was wild and the record itself had the right filth-ridden sound for its time and ultimately these folks had an ace number of riffs per song ratio to start.

‘Celebratory Beheading‘ is just as starkly grotesque and horrified as its questionable album cover suggests though the first impression it gives is post-2010’s deathgrind rather than the full-bodied ale that Contaminated are plopping on the table herein. I’m not sure why the young lady is wearing what appears to be a wedding dress, or who the beheaded fellow is etc., in any context I am not a fan of this type of imagery and how it is paired with a blue and grey version of their logo. Big deal, eh? They’ve still got riffs as the grinding texture of their well-built rhythm guitar tones reinforce the attack of these folks still includes hyper-active blast n’ roll opener as it kicks through and scales through a few simple four count riffs and some ‘Gateways of Annihilation‘-leveled slumming. The initial launch of the album feels less bluntly achieved but no less violence prone ’til we hit a slowing point per the basslines which interrupt the flow of our step, roughly halfway through the otherwise sludged dissonance of “Cosmic Shit Show”, the first piece on the album to spike interest beyond admiration of the higher fidelity (but still filthed-up) results. The general dynamic of their work is still very much alive and writhing in-between shocks of bestial deathgrind, doomed chugs, and some manner of distant classics-minded resolve as they cap off that introductory moment with the best song to showcase all of those traits in an exiting way being “Feral Demise”.

The groove of grinding death is there from the jump and the riffs are hitting just as easily mid-album as they had back in 2017, to the point that Contaminated begin to remind us of where primitive and ugly death metal was at just a handful of years ago before standards for big dumb riffs were (generally speaking) lowered by the death metal/hardcore scene. They aren’t so much immune to that sensibility as they are clearly conscious of where metal and hardcore (or, just grindcore) intersect without losing the brutal menace of death metal. “Final Hours” communicates this best, a simple song that chunks and slithers through its movements for a harrowing and brutal death slapped edge that still finds time to doom about here and there (around ~3:18 minutes in) as they realize one of the more engaging slappers on the full listen. Beyond that point the grinding dance of blades of “…At the End of a Shank” shows us just how brutal they’re willing to go at it this time around while reinforcing that early-to-mid 2000’s deathgrind edge they’ve sported since the first demo tape; As we reach the groaning sway of certain riffs on closer “Junkyard Warfare: Celebratory Beheading” the lines between moshable deathgrind, old school brutal death, and the bestial sub-genre blur of a band like Ascended Dead makes up the holistic impression.

There are bigger grooves throughout, far more moshable riffs than expected, and a reasonably strong vocal command by way of Feculent‘s vocalist as we skim through the deeper layers of ‘Celebratory Beheading‘ but Contaminated‘s long-awaited sophomore release finds its efficacy in its complete and brutal blur of an experience and how readable it is as a charged but still primal mutant. Cutting through all of the smaller details would only serve to miss the point as it were, that this album bludgeons at a notable rate and has a thrill-a-minute feeling in the urgent roar of its action, an underground death metal record for sure but one with uncomplicated appeal sans any pandering to trendiness. A moderately high recommendation.

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