Steel Druhm can never get enough rancid, rotten death. That’s probably why I had a large-capacity rotpit installed on my property, and why I maintain front-row seats at the local autopsy theater. Thus, I welcome what Canada’s Coprolith bring to the charnel house on their Putrescence debut. This is scuzzy, lo-fi, low-I.Q. death for the creeps who worship the vomitorious sounds of Autopsy, Grave, Incantation, and older acts like massively underappreciated Finnish maniacs Demigod.1 Taking many crucial cues from early Autopsy, Coprolith blend harrowing doom with blistering OSDM, and everything feels filthy, infectious, and corrupted. It’s a moldy oldy recipe, but in the hands of some truly sick twists, it can still fuck up your shit, as it does here.
You won’t spend much time wondering where Putrescence is heading either. Opener “Sentenced to the Grave” rips the band-aid off, along with a good portion of healthy flesh, as it brings a teeming, writhing mass of moist and gruesome death metal to life. Melding mid-tempo caveman grinding segments that feel massive and unstoppable with doomy plods that crush your will to thrive, this is like a leaden dead weight on your puny shoulders, but there’s a vibrancy and energy to it even when things are stuck in the meat mulch. Some well-timed upticks of speed with blastbeats and cement-mixer riffs keep you alert and following the funeral program. Add some utterly inhuman, reverb-heavy death croaks and vomit noises, and you’re in the grave business! I especially enjoy the eerie harmonies on the song’s back end. The title track is more of the same, informed by gruelingly meatheaded grooves and ponderous doom marching. The guitars offer just enough variety to keep things interesting, spiked by rabid flare-ups of aural violence.
The album centerpiece is the 7-minute “Defiling Incantation,” which Coprolith certainly do with gusto. It’s a lumbering, unwieldy piece of death-doom that recalls the best moments of Incantation and Winter without copying them, and there’s a dark, sludgy, blackened edge to everything that feels evil and unsettling. How do you follow something like that? With a hyper-aggressive piece of scummy, molten death that could have been on Post Mortem’s classic Coroner’s Office release. “Birthed by Remorseless Flames” packs top-notch Neanderthal power chugs and keeps things heavy enough to liquefy and evacuate the contents of your bowels. This is one of my favorite death ditties of 2026 because it feels olde, bold, and heavy like a two-ton anvil dipped in shit, duck fat, and motor oil. I don’t even care that it almost hits the 6-minute mark because it’s just so greasy and unappetizing. At a skinny 34 minutes, every track is morbidly a beast. Bloat is carefully avoided through carefully timed tempo shifts, and even the longer cuts avoid feeling too long. The production is deranged genius, essentially recreating the horrific sound of Autopsy classics like Severed Survival and Acts of the Unspeakable. It’s grimy, smutty shit-muck, but damn does it hit the feelz bone with a 10 lb. sledge. There’s enough filth-gunk in the sound to please any hardcore death metal elitist, and you can still hear what the band is actually doing!
Guitarists A.K. and J.H. throw all manner of vile, befouled riffs at you, all with teeth that go for the nether-regions. The doomy leads are nigh-irresistible and will plant you in the earth like a flag pole. The urgent, in-your-face riffage feels jagged, ragged, and dripping with tetanus ichor. This sounds old as fook, but just as toxic as anything new-fangled being released today. To this nightmare sauce, add the obscene croaks, moans, and wretches of K.D., who seems to be broadcasting from some Lovecraftian dimension you want no part of. These unholy vocals add a whole layer of poo-crust to the already appallingly impure sound. Bassist A.M. delivers a lot of mass and heft to the sound profile, coming forward at times to shake your bladder batter into stiff peaks. All this is undergirded by the reliably massive drumming of A.M., who knows when to pound you into assdust and when to oppress your brain jelly. This crew knows what they’re about and how to harsh your mellows.
Coprolith have the rotten stuff, and they fling it all over the place. Putrescence is a nasty piece of soiled work and a loving tribute to the kings of death and death-doom. If you want to marinate in the medical waste barrel, this is the slurry to soak in. It will give you a loathsome disease, but you’ll enjoy the entire incubation period. That, my friends, is what good death metal can do for you/to you! GAG!
Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Me Saco Un Ojo / Rotted Life
Websites: coprolith.bandcamp.com | instagram.com/coprolithdeath
Releases Worldwide: July 3rd, 2026
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