Album Review: Foetal Juice – Grotesque (Gore House Productions)

Mancunian stalwarts of extreme metal, Foetal Juice have been flaying minds since 2005 and have become a beloved band across the breadth of the UK and beyond. Now, they’re back, with their 8th full-length album ‘Grotesque’ and it is out on November 17th, 2023, via Gore House Productions.

You will never hear this website say a bad word about Foetal Juice. Not only does their death-grind sound just hit so right, but they are also insane live, and happen to be a great bunch of people. Which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise as a band that deals in such vicious and violent music are always going to be top dudes.

Foetal Juice have made their name by delivering gratuitous and garish noise and Grotesque is no different. If you’ve loved everything this band has done to date, you’re going to love this as well. Foetal Juice are on chaotic form, delivering track after track of pulverising savagery and putrid horror, and it brutalises from the word ‘go’.

Yet, this is not the sound of a band going through the motions. A band so comfortable with their sound that they don’t need to try. Far from it, in fact it finds Foetal Juice sounding even more demonic, even more blood-thirsty, even more hateful, and even more ‘tongue in cheek’ fun.

Yes, this band are fucking fun, get over it.

They’re also immensely talented and this album kicks ten shades of shit out of the listener, especially as it finds the band drawing from their different influences and different eras of death metal. You’ll hear modernised intensity, blended with sickening grind, but you’ll also get plenty of ‘old-school’ horror to sink your teeth into as well.

It’s a wonderful contrast that keeps the album sounding fresh, even if it is such a putrefying mess that might seem impossible. Contrast tracks like Legion of the Grotesque with something like Two Bongs Don’t Make A Right, and you’ll see what we mean. Two absolutely horrifying bangers on an album of horrifying bangers.

Your eyes will water, your ears will bleed, your muscles will ache, your sphincter will tighten, your guts will churn, and you may even vomit. It’s fucking Foetal Juice and it’s fucking Grotesque. Never change you lovable noise-mongers.

Foetal Juice – Grotesque Track Listing:

1. Human Beach Master
2. Mountain of Gore
3. Legion of the Grotesque
4. Ghoul Amongst the Mouldering Dead
5. Two Bongs Don’t Make a Right
6. Cunt of the Litter
7. Cemetery Leachate
8. The Walking Groin
9. Torn Apart
10. F. K. E. O
11. Gruesome

Links

Bandcamp | Big Cartel | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Gore House Productions