Sequestrum – Pickled Preservation Review

Wait, wait. Stop. STOP.

Before we get too far into this – or before we get into at all, in fact – credit where it’s due, and let’s call some attention to the undeniable:

In the pantheon of gore-metal song titles, where pathology and decay sit sickly beside body-horror torture and just plain ickiness, there are scant few titles of the simple caliber of “Giblet Excreter.” It’s not flashy, really; in fact, it’s downright pithy, especially compared to the medical dictionary verbosity of many gorefiends. It’s just two short words, as you can clearly see — but each of those is perfect and the pairing is wonderfully vile. It’s simple and yet horrifically evocative, amusing and equally disgusting, and that is exactly the point.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…

I blathered on about the previous Sequestrum release almost a year ago, the aptly titled Epitome Of Putridity, which crawled up from the rotten depths in March of 2022. The product of this young collaboration between members of Chaotian and Undergang and friends, Epitome was (is) a creepy crawly trudge through the filth-ridden caverns of rot, literal bubbling and dripping offsetting the figurative oozing crawl of downtuned riffs and inhuman growls. Pickled Preservation doesn’t really reinvent that approach, but it certainly refines it, sharpening the riffs and adding new shades of ugliness to the festering proceedings, mining a similar mire and yet allowing the downtuned dirtiness of the guitars to have a little more breathing room.

Appropriately, “Giblet Excreter” opens this second Sequestrum, rising up from its pit atop a full minute of chainsaw-revving feedback and goblin guttural growling, its following quasi-melodic introductory motif buried back in the mix and adorned with even more bubbling sounds as the band kicks in with a slinky, slimy main riff. Following that, a series of almost stoner-metal woozy moments infiltrates the middle of the otherwise gangrenous “Preserved To Last,” the guitars swinging briefly between tremolo-picked carvings, locking with Frederik Laursen’s drums and bringing a certain swagger to these sewers. The blasting “Necromucouphagia” and the blitz of “Guts” (all two seconds of it) are Pickled Preservation’s grindiest moments, running headlong into the blistering bash of “Consigned To Humus.” A second swinging rock bit creeps through the midsection of “Human Broth,” an instant musical hook buoyed by a bouncy cowbell.

Like the EP before it, Pickled Preservation is a short burst of noxious: It’s six originals and a Sequestrum-ized take on Impetigo’s classic “Dis-Organ-Ized” – sixteen minutes of pure wretched disgust, replete with a Simpsons sample so you know for sure that it’s all intended to be exactly as giddily, goofily, gorily fun as it one-hundred-percent is. By the time the final bonesaw sounds, and the screaming intensifies and dies out, the whole of Pickled fades into the nightmares of memory, and it’s time to start Pickled Preservation again (and again and again and…)

I’d be willing to bet that the excretion of giblets has never before been anywhere near this enjoyable.