As if maggots risen by their own churn, thrashing and roiling up toward the scum of mud-drowned gore the festering minds behind Toronto, Ontario-based death metal quintet COPROLITH can be found milling between rotten wrath and suffocating doom in abundance on this abhorrent debut full-length album. Though the moldering, blood-caked ‘old school’ thunder of ‘Putresence‘ is not without precedence the dirt headed, scowling and riff-obsessed among us will appreciate not only the imposing atmospheric girth of the band’s work but the dreary underground thump of its render. A well-stylized and psyche melting effort set far beyond any implications of the band’s demo tape these folks offer a well above-average debut with some room to grow herein.

Named for fossilized shit Coprolith formed just a few years ago in 2023 by way of folks with a pretty broad set of experiences behind them including the drummer from long inactive prog-thrashers Droid and a fellow with more than one goregrind act swimming around in mind. For this formation they’d honed in on a crud-slicked form of gore-obsessed early 90’s Scandinavian death metal with emphasis on the grinding gristle of Finndeath. This made for a bout of chaotic horror per their first demo tape (‘Coprolith‘, 2023) sporting a sound which’d been compared to the slow grinding side of Cerebral Rot and Sedimentum when it released. I wasn’t all that impressed to start, the drum sound was wild and some of the guitar feedback on that tape was satisfying in its application but the riffs weren’t there yet beyond the doomed out “Disfigured Beyond Recognition”. This new album promises greater doom on approach and delivers a bevvy of slow-rotted riffcraft within.

Though we could parse any given combination of classic 90’s death metal inspiration from this work it’d be fair to consolidate the impact of ‘Putrescence‘ nearby early Funebrarum and the post-caverncore atmospheric froth of Phrenelith‘s ‘Desolate Endscape‘ for the sake of contemporary reference. Chasm crawling, far-set and occasionally puked out vocals command the shambling lunges of opener “Sentenced to the Grave“, calling forth an imposing echoic roar as mid-paced, squarely cut riffcraft shapes the rotten landscape ahead. Though it’d be fair to find Finnish death inspiration here that distinction is just as vague as one might find on a Mortiferum record, here a hard as nails downtuned plod feels comparatively less polished, on the brink of unraveling as they cut between slowed death/doom and hammering movements. This is the core dynamic of the band’s work on this album, a marked change from the deathgrinding splatter of their demo.

The album opener was enough to get me in the door but it was the title track, “Putrescence”, that’d truly captured my attention between its toppling but moshable ride and (again) the Finndeath n’ doomed musing at hand. I won’t make the argument that the riffing in the second half of the song is mind-blowing in any sense but rather that Coprolith resemble a ragged, unholy beast of miscreation when all of their gears are turning, even when they’re pumping on some average pit-readied trampling. This becomes a sort of theme which rings in mind with each pass of ‘Putresence‘, that I don’t really mind if I’ve heard similar riffcraft before as what expression is the band’s own (often the vocalists derangement) stuns with its moldering presence and dark death metal sound.

As was the case with Nedgravd‘s debut earlier this year (and ‘Beneath the Columns of Abandoned Gods‘ for that matter) what ultimately sticks in mind on the pass through Coprolith‘s debut is its unhinged, loosely sewn together feeling where a spastic off-kilter blast or a melting analog distortion reverberating in space create an unhinged, or, at least imperfect impression through unexpected detailing. It is the sort of underground shaken temerity that one looks for when seeking personage in the never-ending haul of ‘old school’ adjacent craft. While these folks aren’t particularly green and thier work is inarguably well-formed in most sense the dizzied, groaning slap through a song like “Birthed by Remorseless Flames” births a character more than it does a conversation and one rooted in the darkest demo-level of the ‘old school’ death metal afflicted mind. It also does well to represent the extremes offered within ‘Putresence‘ overall where we find whipping blasts, trucking grooves and slow-melting doom within its thread.

Though most songs on ‘Putresence‘ wheel between those two fonts of interest just once closer “Possessed by Incoherent Violent Suggestions” vacillates with greater frequency within its ~6.5 minute trudge. Their illustration of a tormented mind careening between disturbances unto greater doom with each episode makes for a solid endpoint for the whole deal as the band appear to exhaust their rhythmic interest just as these ~34 minutes are spent. While I’d have appreciated a higher riff count in general Coprolith‘s unexpected forays into death/doom metal style on ‘Putresence‘ demanded some instant fealty on my part, even lunching a few pumps of funeral death/doom along the way as they’d unfurl a truly graven experience. Otherwise the visual curation, caustic yet voluminous sound design and measured approach to composition all amount to a heavily repeatable standard for my own taste. A very high recommendation.

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