Engorgement wants to explain to us what brutality is.
In 2026, Mitch Rider (drums, ex-Kraanium), Ricky Hill (guitar), Stu Hine (vocals, Gore Sanctum), and Richard Lynn (bass/backing vocals, Gore Sanctum) are back in force with their second album, They Rot Beneath Our Floor, released via Comatose Music.
The album kicks off with Prelude to Your Dismemberment, an introduction with a quite explicit name as to what follows, offering Trap sounds before moving on to Keep Festering, which delivers on the previous promises. Everything about this track is pure violence, from the riffs to the screams, with an openly abrasive mix that makes every cymbal explode, reinforcing the devastating aspect, just like on Rot Beneath Our Floor, where the drums sometimes take up a little too much space compared to the other instruments, especially on the blast parts. The rest of the song is also very catchy, unleashing its fury in waves, like Sanctum of Gore, which strings together groovy mosh parts, drowning us in ever-increasing aggression that breaks our necks. We continue with Watching Your Body Twitch, which offers a much more dissonant touch on the guitars, but here too the drums are very present, competing with the vocalist’s growls before allowing us a moment of respite with the final sample, then Complete Bowel Extraction explodes in our faces, molesting us with its massive rhythm. A new sample allows us to catch our breath, then Unmerciful Redemption hits us hard, offering a more enjoyable mix, especially on the thick, jerky parts packed with slam elements. We find fast-paced riffs that skillfully punctuate the five minutes of the song without encroaching on the palm mutes, then Resurrection takes a similar approach, shamelessly continuing what can be called, without shame, auditory destruction with continuous pachydermic rhythms. The final eruption comes from Blunt Force Osteotomy, an unsurprisingly ultra-violent composition that offers a touch of old school to reinforce its aggressiveness, particularly in the slower passages before a crushing finale that leads into the aptly named Outro, closing the album as it began.
As the band had hinted, their return is definitively marked by pure violence with They Rot Beneath Our Floor! The album allows Engorgement to make up for so many years of absence, but it takes a little while to get used to the explosive mix.
85/100