Album Review: Hemorrhoid – Raw Materials of Decay (Extremely Rotten Productions / Headsplit Records)

Quietly released in March of this year, ‘Raw Materials of Decay’ is the debut full-length album from PDX death metal gore-grinders Hemorrhoid. Now, it will receive proper worldwide treatment via a collaboration between Extremely Rotten Productions and Headsplit Records on June 28th. The album will be available on CD, vinyl, digital, and cassette formats.

15-tracks long and coming in at around 25-minutes in length, it’s a grindcore special, with Hemorrhoid here to add their own brand of guttural filth to the overflowing sick bucket that is this particular scene.

There are few surprises here, but few would actively be looking for one anyway. When you hear grindcore, you want grindcore, and Hemorrhoid deliver that sound. With the belligerence of death metal and horror-heavy tone of gore thrown in for good measure. From beginning to end, it’s a rancid and rancorous listen. A barrage of speed and heaviness that makes you feel like you’ve been wallowing in a pit of festering corpses.

Forget accessibility, forget distinction, and forget sense. That is not the Hemorrhoid way with this sound appealing to the extreme crowd, and the extreme crowd alone. Even then, it’s such an unrelenting listen that there will be some who enjoy the sound of violence, finding themselves extremely nauseous as the album goes on. It really is that horrible sounding.

You might think this is overselling it, but you’d be very wrong. Raw Materials of Decay is as vile as it comes. Which is credit to the abilities of Hemorrhoid who don’t just create this level of feeling but sustain it and keep it interesting. 25 minutes of gory grindcore and death metal might sound palatable, but after 10 minutes of what Hemorrhoid do here, the mind will begin to feel numb.

A negative, for sure, but as track after track comes barrelling out with body exploding force, it’s easy to be taken it by the horror on show. Musically, it’s the equivalent of being torn apart by a rabid wolf and left to rot in the sun as the birds pick at your torn flesh.

Hemorrhoid – Raw Materials of Decay Track Listing:

1. Hemorrhoidal Removal Surgery
2. Exogenous Intestinal Blockage
3. Ultimate Commode of Chaos & Carnage
4. Moderate to Severe Plaque Psoriasis
5. Rancid Rectal Rupture
6. A Dozen Suppurating Masses
7. Stool Borne Illness
8. Sliced & Tucked
9. Raw Materials of Decay
10. Dante’s Fecal Inferno
11. Liquefied In A Caustic Sludge
12. Esophageal Rupture
13. Ectopic Scrambling
14. Festering Blood Pit
15. Cacophony of Bloody Lactation

Links

Bandcamp | Spotify