Artist: Mephitic Corpse
Country: USA
Label: Extremely Rotten Productions / Headsplit Records / 625 Thrash!
Formats: Vinyl / Cassette Tape / CD
Year: 2025
With the band’s debut, the ‘Immense Thickening Vomit’ demo tape from 2019, Mephitic Corpse managed to draw quite a bit of attention to itself. In the following years that demo tape saw no less than six reissues through various labels such as the respected Extremely Rotten Productions and Headsplit Records, most of them, though, would see the light of day as a cassette tape. But after the, perhaps somewhat unexpected success, it was pretty quiet around the band for a long time until they almost as unexpectedly came up with a 2-track promo tape in 2024. A taste of what these Americans had in store for us with their debut album. Those of you who have heard the band before or get excited by ultra Grindcore infused Death Metal of the very ugliest kind: stay tuned!
The trio returns in optima forma with ‘Sickness Attracts Sickness’. The album’s cover might not be the most attractive or be the best piece of gory art you have seen, but in a way this fits perfectly with the music’s ethics. If you happen to have been familiar with the band’s previous work, you will not at all be surprised by the what the band serves you this time. Exactly zero of their modus operandi has changed. Consequently, the music is still best seen as a crossbreed between pre-‘Chainsaw Dismemberment’ Mortician, early Broken Hope and Disgorge (the American one).
That basically means that ‘Sickness Attracts Sickness’ is a record that breathes the same vibe and atmosphere of the Brutal Death Metal of the late 90’s and early 00’s. It is clearly heavily influenced by those bands who were up and coming in these thriving days of the genre. Obviously built on the corner stones of classic Death Metal bands like Cannibal Corpse but pushed further into the extremes by adding a lot of gore-styled Grindcore. Compared to those early bands like the aforementioned Broken Hope and Disgorge but also Putrid Pile, Lividity and Fleshgrind it is quite clear that Mephitic Corpse belongs to a new generation who not only learned how to sound even more foul, but especially found a way to make it sound heavier in terms of production.
Of course, ‘Sickness Attracts Sickness’ was made over a quarter of a century after those first classics, so the currently available technology is an obvious advantage, but as a whole Mephitic Corpse knows how to sound really authentic. The full and heavy sound prevents the album to sound compressed or plastic, instead the rather organic sound adds to the overall nasty experience – again, fitting well to the cover art that reminded me somewhat of Leukorrhea’s 2001 debut album.
So, in short, it might be clear that this is neither for the weak of heart or the ones who are on the lookout for smooth sounding, groove-filled trendy Death Metal. This is just what the cover art suggests. Yet, besides a great trip down memory lane, ‘Sickness Attracts Sickness’ is also a very well composed and executed record that shows that these three fine young cannibals know very well what they are doing.
