This is a second pressing that Utech did for Dead Neanderthal's experimental death crawl, which by all outward appearances looks like a straight-up death metal album. Which is more or less is, albeit the kind of death metal that materializes on the other end of this Dutch two=piece's portal when they move from the heavy, abrasive sax-and-drums driven improv of their earlier work and get neck-deep in a pungent world of rot, subhumanized malevolence, and barbaric down-tuned heaviosity. Still sounds like Dead Neanderthals to me, since they've been experimenting with heavier and heavier sound for years, often diving into vast chasms of avant-garde doom metal. But man, this stuff? This is supremely putrid in a way I've never heard from 'em before. It's killer.

These guys wilt and warp everything they touch, and when the Dead Neanderthals start in on their totally head-wrecked version of doom-death, these apocalypse riders unleash some out-of-control, head-melting heaviness so caked in rot and puke that it makes me woozy. "Blood Rite" is a crusher, almost half an hour long as the duo navigates deep subterranean riff-systems and geologic ambience. Quite different from the doom-laden jazz-adjacent chaos and improvisational complexity you'll find on so many of their other releases, this single monolithic piece of music is minimalist ultra-doom dragging you down black fissures in the earth. Insanely heavy, and with abject vocalizations that accentuate the aura of slow-motion decomposition and monstrousness. René Aquarius’ provides a caveman four-count on the cymbals heralds an immediate blast of tar-thick roiling distorted crush from Otto Kokke’s electronics, a miserable minor-key chord progression sluggishly tumbling through space , barely tethered to those raw, cavernous drum. That percussion is only partially concerned with time keeping, and more of a puncturing jolt of primitive pummel straining beneath the weight of the roar of molten overdriven synth-rot and guttural, inhuman exhalations. That synthesizer is sick, so blown-out and distorted that it feels like a wall of guitars, but with its own unique over-modulated texture. "Blood Rite" just churns away, this ritualized, vomit-soaked cave-dirge that feels like some bizarre confluence of Autopsy and/or Winter getting beamed through an obscenely abused stack of electronic instrumentation. There are also these moments where the crumbling, crushing slo-mo distortion drops off and you're getting hit with a radiant, solarized stream of pure droning synth that creates a sudden shift in the atmosphere, the drums pounding out some tribal beat deep beneath an almost Skullflower-like ray of incandescent psych-drone. And when that eventually collapss back into the atavistic torturous torpor of the heaviness, the contrast is fantastic. It turns into something strangely triumphant. Massively heavy. Regal. Glacial. Earth-devouring. I don’t think I've ever heard anyone merge extreme psychedelic drone with doom-death the way they do here. It's pretty brilliant.

There's a piece of me that feels like this is a genetic descendant of the earliest jazz-grindcore stuff Painkiller did. Not in the sound so much, but in the general strategy, spirit of experimentation, and quest for the further edges of just how heavy and skull-grindingly abrasive you can get while fucking around with form, seemingly unorthodox instrumentation, and sheer aggression. Could just be me,of course. I did get extremely high right before listening to Blood Rite for the umpteenth time and jotting down my thoughts here. So, you know, caveat emptor. In any event, I would love to hear the Neanderthals explore this sound more, as it feels like there's a lot of potential within this primitive palette of putrescent instrumentation and minimalist riffcrush. Please, bring it on.