Back in 2022, these French maniacs, formerly known as Herpes, dropped their excellent debut, Blood Red Tentacle. A fine Swedeath album with a foul reek of Autopsy that reminded me of the short-lived super group Murder Squad. And with their second effort, not much has changed.

If anything, the stench of Autopsy is even thicker in the punky, sinewy, canterkerous crawls and canters that have an even higher level of gross, icky cathciness and that Swedish buzz we all know and love. And the result is arguably the peak of current Autopsy worship, up there with Slaughterday, Carnal Savagery and such.

And about 1:43  into the opener “Catacomb Dwellers” (the first part of the song is a long-lasting scrawling intro of sorts), you get the album’s first smile-inducing Autopsy homage with a slick, stomping riff, and the album never looks back.

Second track “Tombs Vomiting the Dead” delivers a speedy, feral number while “Ripped From Within” has that instantly recognizable visceral crawling intro and gallop that we know from Autopsy’s classic early albums. Then we get the mid-paced jaunt of “Ripped From Within”, which also has some nice icky, slower moments.

And speaking of oozing, sickly crawls as you’d expect, there are plenty of other killer ones mired in the sneering gallops (i.e, “Extremity in Morbidity”, “Blessed By Decay”, “In Horror, Reborn”) such as “Crypt of Demented”, “Dark Ages Ritual” and pasrts of closer ‘Call From the Void”, and for me, these are the album highlights.

A fine follow-up, to a fine debut, and it’s clear Disfuneral is a rising star in the genre, and the third album should be a real barnburner, as I predict a jump to one of the major labels.

[Visit the band's website]

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