With repeated exposure to the most horrifying, vile and taxing extremes available to humanity most folks develop a numbness to derangement, no longer flinching at the traumatic horrors of their surroundings more than they would the stale reek of their own shit, whereas others internalize their reaction unto stoic psychopathy. In the case of Turin, Italy-based brutal death metal quintet PUTRIDITY each expression manifests with severe contempt wherein a callous fascination with the grotesque nature of humanity runs concurrent with murderously hammered out scenarios of sickening condemnation. For this fourth full-length album, ‘Morbid Ataraxia‘, these pinch harmonic torturing tunnelers of depravity assemble ten years beyond the last again acting with unflinching brutality for the sake of expressing profound disgust.

Putridity formed as a solo project from guitarist Putrid Ciccio back in 2005 and picked up traction quick beyond the first demo, expanding into a trio who’d become known for playing as fast and brutal as possible with shades of Gorgasm and Disgorge in their horrified, extremely depraved vision of brutal death metal. As I’d suggested a couple of years ago in review of their pre-emptive EP (‘Greedy Gory Gluttony‘, 2023) the band’s discography cemented their name as a handful of notable brutal death bands from Italy that’d stood out in the 2000’s. Their stuff was and is void of tech-death, deathcore, and slam having always served a sub-half hour roll through inadvisably extreme brutality. All of their releases are relentless though my personal favorite is their debut ‘Mental Prolapse Induced Necrophilism‘ (2007) as that was more within the range of my heyday within the niche, and the fan favorite is typically ‘Ignominious Atonement‘ (2015). Obsessive fans of brutal death metal will appreciate the production values being tweaked within each of their records with some era-specific sounds standing out as well as the nuance available to their tempo map, the drumming being wild as shit in most cases.

The sound and style of ‘Morbid Ataraxia‘ has already been prompted pretty heavily by ‘Greedy Gory Gluttony‘ in the sense that versions of two songs from this album (“Adipocere Retribution” b/w “Molten Mirrors of the Subjugated”) could be found on that EP, though these are new recordings done in 2024. Putridity haven’t fucked with the sledgehammered maul of their gig and the full listen will be blasted and chugged through with reckless abandon; A couple of key changes help to characterize this release starting with the addition of new drummer Cédric Malebolgia (Molested Divinity) and a somewhat more “realistic”, enriched treatment of the drums and guitar tones here via the mix from early days collaborator Luca Minieri (Illogicist) @ Dissonant Studio and mastering from the maestro Wojtek Wiesławski at Hertz Studio. Despite all of those signs pointing to 2000’s era ear-jabbing drum render the result is eerily warmed over, letting the guitars ring a bit louder and create churn above the snare’s levelling crack.

Percussive and barbaric in expression yet cut by a reasonably technical chisel Putridity‘ve always been more about over-the-top speed and spectacle though they were never not about the riff. In fact Ciccio‘s hand for ear catching and obnoxious tonal scald only seems to have intensified beyond 2015 as we drop into the chaotic tempo-flipping trample of “Mors Mater Nostra” and ripped-out runs of “Molten Mirrors of the Subjugated”. Much as I’d typically show up for the grunt-and-bap of this type of brutal death I’d appreciated that the guitars were neither backgrounded in the mix nor background nox in nature. The bass guitar shows up here and there but only enough to identify the body within the 280 bpm slurry in ear, sporting a few spastic flourishes in a handful of these songs. Much as I like plenty of bass guitar representation in brutal death this is less a case of it being turned down and moreso a pretty natural placement for said tone, keeping it less than clean so that when the basslines do spark up they’re more than just a mudbutt tone.

There are some slower sections and pieces here and of course I’d dug those, the best being the title track (“Morbid Ataraxia”) with its Immolation-esque drop in and slow, sludgier lean beyond ~1:45 minutes in. The pace kind of slows a bit in the middle of “Adipocere Retribution” and inserts some heady guitar effects out of pocket but most of ‘Morbid Ataraxia‘ drills as hard and fast as it can. These are welcome breaks within the “meat” of the experience but of course most listeners will be locked into the crush of it all; The full listen begins to accumulate a draining, oscillating sample set between, before and after several of its songs and it sounds like it was taken from the original Doom. A gut-bubbling noise that crawls from ear to ear which accounts for about third of the finale, all lumped into one ~12.5 minute track, as “Immersed in the Spell of Death” gives way to a long gap of peristalsis ’til the secret track beyond is Putridity‘s cover of “Rotted Divinity” from Enmity‘s infamous sole LP hits. I didn’t love the frequency of that eerie noise to start, much less the gap at the end of the album, but those details are dwarfed by the ruggedly torn-through density of the album otherwise.

Rolling through a four album discography that spends most of its time hitting at the speed of a helicopter blade naturally incites a hypnotic state per the concerted ear and in my time with Putridity the nausea of those thousand whips to the skull hit hardest when swerving through ‘Morbid Ataraxia‘. They’ve held onto the impact of their previous work while culling the headache of the render and somehow still end up sounding as appallingly brutal and extreme today as they did a couple of decades ago. A high recommendation.

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