With a satisfyingly illegible logo, artwork that recalls the gleeful sickness of aborted and vocals dragged up from the bowels of hell, Putrified J loiter convincingly at the darkest extremes of death metal. Brutal and brutalising, tracks are short, sharp and dispatched with the pungent whiff of rotting flesh, the band sticking to a template of scorched-earth savagery that cannot fail to impress.
Opening with the apocalyptic title track, Putrified J set out their stall in no uncertain terms. Horror movie samples, relentless drums, guitars that sound like slabs of concrete being smashed together and a harrowing vocal that is broadly indecipherable, it is a short, searing introduction to the band’s oeuvre. Dispatched before the listener has time to adjust, the strangely addictive sickening decapitation at least relaxes the pace a touch in between bouts of frenetic wind-milling. Third track relentless (surely the EP’s unofficial title) does exactly what it says on the tin, Jason Lambert conjuring ever-more inhuman sounds from his ravaged vocal chords as blast beats rain down around him. Similarly, undead terror adopts a seething viciousness that doesn’t stop flailing away at the listener until their sunk, glassy-eyed on the floor. The battering ram approach is almost too effective as we plunge into seeds of infamy, the tempo barely changed and a slight feeling of déjà vu descending upon the listener’s fogged brain but, fortunately, the crepuscular doom-grind intro to infected earth varies the pace just enough to sweep away the miasma before the band once more unleash a blast-beat tsunami that sweeps away all in its path.
It is as well that the deep end of horror is kept short because the end result is so thoroughly brutal as to risk desensitization through repeat exposure. As it is, the EP is short enough to remain effectively stunning for its twelve-minute run time, the listener left reeling at its conclusion. Not for the faint of heart, the deep end of horror offers not an ounce of compromise and it will leave the appetites of those sonic adventurers, ever-searching for the heaviest matter in the universe, well-sated. 8.5
