LEADBELCHER – Heavens Bloated Corpse

Assembled in 2024, the band casts members past and present from Sermon Of Flames, Mortichnia and Coscradh and their collective forces here have produced eight filthy death grind aberrations shoved into about 22 minutes. Instantly the album kicks into dense low end riffage and crust laden grooves bashed along with catchy mid-to-fast-paced changes, d-beaty skanks and blasts, all capped off with nasty throat workings. Produced by James Plotkin (OLD, Scorn, Khanate et al) who is renowned for his expertise in all things heavy and sonically subterranean, his signature of mass and volume feels evidenced in the immensity of this. 

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Overall, the sound is huge and sludgy with massively down-tuned guitars chunking out slabs of bruising riffage scaffolded by a deep grizzling bass slamming out on the lower spectrums. The drums are punchy and thunderous, with crispy blasts, neat fills and solid tempo changes all patterned nicely to form this bulldozing wrath. Lyrically, themes of death (of corpse), gore, corruption disease, and decay and versed with compressed roars, growls, and occasional low-pitched bawls articulating the concepts with sickening accordance.

From the hostile intro Pisscorpse, the festering seamlessly bleeds into Narrowhouse, and the mood is dank and hate filled with a vicious mince like fury. The unrelenting assaults and battery continue with Immured With Holy Excrement and Lower Than Scum, providing more stench infused libations of bacterial horror. Offlated Yeshua is a punishing standout filled with savage riffing, some kitsch tupa-tupa like nuances and blasty breakdowns; while King’s Evil is the shortest offering that kinda sits with a buzzy death-grind Mortify template. Severance of Belief takes a slightly angular path of dissonant chord progressions, more pummelling blast beats, and intense crust-doom acuity. Light of Vile Elucidation tames the pace back and transcends the blacker edges of the soundboard with a nihilistic and suppurate death-sludge that completes this vehement discourse.

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Fans of gore-grinding death and doom will find appeal with Heavens Bloated Corpse. While it has similar reflections of earlier crust kings like Bolt Thrower, Asphyx, and / or Mortician - also think of dynamics found in Nothingness, Fossilization or Putrescence and you will kinda know the tectonics of where this is going. LEADBELCHER have cranked out a ferocious debut that is grimy, rancid, and soaked with enough filth that will keep the flies in a frenzy until the next rotting cadaver arrives.

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SCORE 9/10

Reviewed by glennosp