HORRIFYING — Altered States Fermentation (review)

HORRIFYING — Altered States Fermentation album cover

Album · 2017 · Death Metal

4/5 · 2020-05-27
siLLy puPPy

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to many but South America has been one of the most emphatically staunch supporters of extreme metal from the very beginning producing many famous bands starting way back with Sepultura and continuing into the modern era. One of the most intense metal nations surely has to be Chile that for a nation its size at 17 million seems to have a huge number of metal bands per capita even in the remotest of regions.

One of the more intense death metal bands to come from Chile emerged in the southern city of Puerto Montt which is pretty much the end of the road before you hit the pristine natural splendor of Patagonia’s southern lands. This band was formed in 2010 by Putrid Body (drums) and Raul Arancibia (lead guitar) and later joined by Johan M. (vocals, 2011-present) and Mario Carrasco (guitar, 2012-present). The band released a demo in 2012 and a following EP “Euphoric Existence” in 2013 but ALTERED STATES FERMENTATION the only full album to emerge so far was released in 2017 on the Veins Full of Wrath label.

While many death metal bands are drifting off into psychedelic and technical terrain, bands like HORRIFYING are steadfast in keeping old school death metal sounds alive and well in the 21st century with all those classic labyrinthine riff drives, blistering bass and drum freneticism with the expected growly guttural growls that offer a few Morbid Angel guitar squeals and sizzling Slayer inspired solos. HORRIFYING has been compared to classic bands like Sweden’s Merciless or the California based Sadistic Intent with blistering sonic assaults that are designed to raise the dead.

 While this is technically an album, it only clocks in at 26 minutes with five tracks however HORRIFYING delivers quite a specular display of instrumental command and a flair for crafting old school death metal without sounding like a mere clone of those classic sounds from the past and the album is graced with the benefit of a modern production job that doesn’t resort to slick polishing but rather enhances the sick and twisted morbidity of it all! Band members are associated with other bands from the burgeoning Puerto Montt scene which is a city of over 200,000. Satellite bands include Demonic Rage, Infernal Slaughter, Excoriate, Funeral Chant, Satanic Ripper and Warfare.

While originality can’t be claimed by HORRIFYING as this is as classic death metal as it gets with nothing new under the sun to bring to the table, it is quite impressive that this band has so carefully crafted an album that fits in so nicely with the classic early 90s sounds of old school death metal and offers an extreme delivery of five tracks that runs the gamut of anarchic swirls of chaos to select melodic passages that add a little sweetener to the mix. The guitars are raw and ugly as are the murky mixes and demonic vocal utterances. HORRIFYING deliver a much better than expected product and i find this truly amazingly awesome death metal! Aaaaarrrrrggghhhh!