Festering Grotesqueries is the highly anticipated debut album from Portland's old-school, gore-soaked, grinding death metal outfit DRIPPING DECAY. Originally founded by guitarist Neil Smith (LORD GORE, FRIGHTMARE, BLOOD FREAK) in 2019, its olid, hellish sounds were later rounded out by vocalist Eric Stucke, bassist Jackson Jordan (CONDUCTING FROM THE GRAVE), and drummer Jason Borton (JUNGLE ROT). All of the band members have been devout fans of death metal and grindcore for decades (some since the '90s), and they take their influence from bands REPULSION, TERRORIZER, NAPALM DEATH, and CARCASS. Take that blueprint and combine it with fast tempos, technical precision, and a licentious adoration of '80s Italian B-horror films, and you have a recipe for the fantastically repugnant makings of DRIPPING DECAY -- making them stand in a class of their own amidst a sea of kids copy and pasting Entombed and Incantation riffs into oblivion. Festering Grotesqueries' album artwork sees the return of their fashionably putrefied mascot, "DRIPPY" -- a creation of artist Toni K. Hietomaa, whose brilliantly sickening visions also graced the cover of DRIPPING DECAY's 2021 demo, Watching You Rot. Look closely at the cover and you will see that the illustrations depict an abhorrent amalgamation of the album's lyrical forays into the macabre, including a corpse being incinerated (a nod to "CREMATOR"), a man caught devouring his own arm in an act of gluttonous euphoria ("AUTOCANNIBAL ECSTASY"), and another guy who can't stomach the grotesque sights in front of him, unleashing a river of vomit from his open mouth ("BARF BAG"). The illustration perfectly encapsulates DRIPPING DECAY's ability to be both ferociously sincere and utterly, ridiculously tongue-in-cheek -- a balance all good death metal should strike.
![INQUISITION - Incense Of Rest [Inferna Profundus]](https://www.hellsheadbangers.com/pulse-regular/02LP45081439.jpg "INQUISITION - Incense Of Rest [Inferna Profundus]")
