Maggot Stomp, as I have stated before, is one of the best smaller, underground death metal labels out there.  They have been responsible for finding talent, early in a band’s career, and then the band blows up and gets bigger offers, such as Sanguisugabogg and Frozen Soul, jumping ship to Century Media Records a few years ago.  Those 2 bands are now pretty big touring heavyweights and Maggot Stomp, knowing that Sanguisugabogg are still one of the hottest bands out there, have found, Algor Mortis!!

Hailing from Australia, this up-and-coming band is literally the land down under’s answer to Ohio’s Sanguisugabogg, to the proverbial T.  Sanguisugabogg has done a fair amount of touring overseas and hitting Australia as well and maybe Algor Mortis picked up on some of that oomph.  Releasing an extremely promising 5 song self-titled demo in 2020, this demo has a huge Sanguisugabogg influence.  The down-tuned sludgy groovy sound is a sound I will never get bored with.  I love it.  From the guttural vocals to the sludgy and very heavy stomps Algor Mortis’ debut demo hit pretty darn hard.  They also included 808 bass bomb drops on the demo for added brutal effect.

The band released their Stages of Death EP independently a few months ago and it kind of just wallowed in Bandcamp for a bit until Maggot Stomp took notice and picked up the band and added them to their roster and have properly reissued this.  5 songs in less than 14 minutes, I EXPECT big things from Algor Mortis, especially if they are willing to tour.  There’s even some guest spots from Kruelty and Disentomb to boot.

“Severed” opens the ep and is more of an intro/instrumental.  The music is heavy AF and the slow down at the minute mark with the putrid vocals will make you pummel walls all damn day.  At a little over a minute, this song provides the opening juice ripe for the squeezing for “Eyeballs to Entrails” to erupt next.  A monstrous slam then blasts galore and killer drum patterns all over the place and let me tell you Cecilia Keane has quite the set of pipes.  Her disgusting filthy vocals will level you and your neighborhood.

“Rotten to the Core” begins with a killer sludgy groove that if this song is played live, I cannot imagine why it would not, will cause fisticuffs from the pit all throughout the song.  There are some off-kilter blasting moments and very nice guitar work with some sweeps.  The song traverses into full-on blasting right up until a filthy growl lets us know the Holy Shit part is about to hit.  And boy does it ever.  Right into a monster groove and the song gets even slower ala The Acacia Strain and this moment has some terrific isolated bass guitar heaviness from Sam Commens.  Fucking ruthless.  I like the little ditty of a blast towards the end of the song too, as it fades out.

Stages of Death is a great EP and Algor Mortis is yet another new band on the roster of Maggot Stomp putting scene veterans on notice.  We can do it heavier and more effectively, bruthers and sistas!!  This is monster heaviness and a lot of fun to listen to.  Killer new band!!

[Visit the band's website]

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