Across the vast infinite gulf of death’s dark, ineffable fetid horrors lurk in the repugnant murk between our reality and the next, stalking the nether regions of the human imagination and spreading night terrors like wildfire. One such nightmare is “Foul and Defiled” by Coffin Lurker, an enigmatic collaboration of Maurice “Mories” De Jong (Gnaw Their Tongues, Cloak of Altering, Aderlating, et cetera) and Renee Aquarius (Plague Organ, Imperial Cult, etc.) which pushes ‘heavy’ to new extremes.
Foul and Defiled lumbers ponderously forth like a prehistoric behemoth risen from an icy crypt, trampling all in its path and exuding an atmosphere thick with pestilence and misery. The album cover depicts a mound of human bones heaped before the opening to what can be assumed to be a crypt or mausoleum, and the black and ochre hues of the artwork further evoke a nauseating sense of claustrophobic filth. From open to close, listeners are ensorcelled by brooding, reverberating drones, crushing riffs, and drums that throb in the darkness as demonic shrieking and bellowing cuts through the undulating darkness like the poisoned tip of a spear, piercing straight to the meat and radiating outward, slowly.
Other bands have explored this type of droning doom metal (Moss, Catacombs) but Coffin Lurker has taken the mold for this type of music and further reshaped it into something a bit more palatable than the aforementioned acts: suffocatingly heavy distortion and riffs low and slow enough to challenge the uninitiated while not boring the rest of us. Foul and Defiled is an odious descent into the darker regions of experience which will leave listeners scarred, blinded, and pleading for more. Support Coffin Lurker and listen below:
Foul and Defiled by Coffin Lurker
Towers of Rust 