PUTRID DEFECATION: Bowels Of Hell

Release year: 2019
Label: Stadin Rec

Slam is one of those subgenres of death metal which is hard to take seriously at least on face value. In striving to go for the goriest, most disgusting imagery and accompanying audial aura, it usually can’t avoid being funny. And when it’s unintentional, it easily becomes kind of sad. Luckily Finnish Putrid Defecation (whose sole member Peter Halin also plays in Discreant, whose demo we reviewed earlier) have seemed to realize this, and don’t take things too seriously. The Leslie Nielsen sample that opens the three-track demo ensures no mistake can be made. It also makes me instantly warm up to the demo, because the two first Naked Weapon movies are amongst my all-time favourites.

With a running time of a mere eight minutes, I’m tempted to call Bowels Of Hell short and sweet. But that might not be quite appropriate, considering the fart obsessed imagery: all song titles refer to the expulsion of gastric gases. Whatever the correct adjective be, the demo is definitely a fun little romp.

To be sure, there’s nothing particularly original and definitely nothing innovative about Bowels Of Hell. It’s ludicrously heavy and down-tuned with the appropriate breakdowns, burp-level guttural vocals laced unsurprisingly laced with pig squeal bits, handled by session vocalist Nick Lehmacher of Farmhouse Massacre, and so on. All in all, just what you’d expect from a slam death metal demo.

But it’s fun. The songs are well-written and performed well, and whilst none are classic-to-be material, all stand the wear and tear of repeated listening well. There’s an aura of fun-ness over it all, like this was fun stuff to write, perform and record, and it gives the demo an additional little boost.

So if slam’s yer thang, you could do a lot worse than this.

3/5

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