NOGOTHULA - Telluric Sepsis
December 17, 2024, 3 weeks ago
(Blood Harvest)
Great, there's two, maybe three, more words I need to look up thanks to Ohio-based DM crew Nogothula and their debut, Telluric Sepsis. Originally released digitally in April, Blood Harvest saw the potential here and stepped up to give the record a more formal delivery to the world.
And we're the richer for it, from doomy death leadoff track “Awakening” to the blasting “Chaospore”, which sounds nothing like Meshuggah and instead leans somewhere between a caveman Cryptopsy and an academic Autopsy, which ain't a bad place to accidentally end up.
“Catacomb Cauldron” has a killer name and a killer RC Records two-step before a Suffo-groove destroys all; “Labyrinthian Sunken Spires” also has a killer name and gets more jagged and ice-cold with the riffs and the vox, and goes low and slow with a certain relaxed ease I very much like.
Closer “Meandering Comotose Twilight... The Carrion Viaduct” (all the song titles rule, they all rule) is the 8:10 epic, death/doom with a hint of Peaceville Three majesty (and, at 7:23, the vocal performance of the year). Nogothula have crafted a fantastic DM debut here, Blood Harvest doing the right thing by reissuing it; wherever the band goes from here (hopefully they emphasize the sludgier parts of their sound, but everything on this record is great) is going to be worth paying attention to.
