Welcome to Demo:listen, your weekly peek into the future of underground metal. Whether it’s death, black, doom, sludge, grind, thrash, heavy, speed, progressive, stoner, retro, post-, punk-, -core, etc. we’re here to bring you the latest demos from the newest bands. On this week’s Demo:listen we recoil and blanch in the presence of Seattle’s Fetid.
From the city that spawned such hair-raising, putrid filth as Infester and Starbuck’s comes a brand new method for self-inflicting pantalgia developed by a trio of deviant Seattleites known as Fetid. After gaining immense power from devouring their former identity Of Corpse, Fetid now play death metal like a gorilla plays with a human baby. According to Fetid’s drummer/vocalist, Jullian Rhea, Of Corpse became Fetid when “Of Corpse was in need of a new bass player and Chelsea [Loh] (who has been a good friend of ours for years and rips the bass, checkout Cauterized) was there without a doubt to fill the gap.” After Loh joined, the trio played the shows they had booked under the name Of Corpse, but were all the while busy writing material for Fetid’s demo, the very demo you’ll be privileged enough to hear shortly.
Fetid’s demo, deliciously titled Sentient Pile of Amorphous Rot, was recorded using “the same four-track tape deck used for the Of Corpse demos,” according to Rhea. For many modern bands aping the old ways an analog recording would be the only thing actually old school about their sound at all. But Fetid’s demo is far from a weak superficial attempt at merely sounding vintage. Sentient Pile, for all its brutality, corrosive bass lines, and gurgling sewage vocals, is a throwback to those early 90s days when shadowy juggernauts like Rottrevore, Immortal Suffering, Nuclear Death, etc. stalked the underground of American death metal. Fetid fits right in with those bands that were too brutal, and way too ugly-sounding for the limelight. You’ll hear how guitarist/vocalist Clyle Lindstrom’s riffs—especially their doomier ones—sound exhumed from some ad hoc backyard cemetery, and seem to ooze and nearly fall off like so much decaying flesh from the drum beats that sustain them.
Fetid’s demo was released only a few weeks ago on pro-cassette from Headsplit Records, that PNW-based purveyor of gore, madness and sleaze. So if you’re a collector you had better get your tape while you still can because Fetid seem dead set on global domination. The trio will tour the land down under with Sewercide this summer. “I was going to fly down to play the drums for Sewercide on a handful of dates for their upcoming Indonesian and Australian tour as it were, so it wasn’t too hard to get Chelsea and Clyle to join in on that,” explains Rhea. “None of us have been [to Australia] so we are all pretty fuckin’ keen to say the least. Certainly looking forward to meeting all the ‘heads down there, getting to play death metal with those maniacs [in Sewercide] every night and learn even more sick lingo.”
Rhea also promises that “a run of long sleeves” are coming down the pike, featuring the demo artwork (which, incidentally, was drawn by Fetid’s bassist Loh), plus a new shirt featuring a Yuri Kahan design. Those will be available at upcoming Fetid shows and on the Headsplit Records website for those who live not on the west coast nor in Australia. Meanwhile the trio are already hard at work on their full length. Ah, yes, the future is bright and full of terror thanks to gnarly assemblages like Fetid.
Now, without further ado, here’s Fetid’s demo, Sentient Pile of Amorphous Rot for your displeasure. We here at Demo:listen would like to extend a huge thanks to Jullian Rhea and the rest of Fetid for granting us the exclusive stream.
You heard Fetid here first on Demo:listen. Check back next and every Friday for promising new metal.
