One of the very first underground death metal bands I found when I first got online in the mid-90s was California’s Sepsism. The material on their earlier releases instantly caught my attention, especially the unreleased Necrotic Flesh Rot and Severe Carnal Butchery demos, which was pure Tomb Of The Mutilated Cannibal Corpse-influenced death metal with a hint of Terrorizer/Nausea grind. While the demo material was incredibly powerful, the band’s debut full length offering, Purulent Decomposition was anything but, lacking in substance, strength and presentation. Four years later, after some minor line-up changes, Sepsism returned with their second full length, To Prevail In Disgust, which is both better and worse than the debut. The main problem with the album is the production simply sucks; it’s like listening to a CD at low volume while wearing earplugs. Everything sounds very muffled and sloppy, often making the album difficult to listen to. Musically, however, this is a huge improvement over Purulent Decomposition, with the emphasis put back on being heavy as fuck. While the music is still heavily Cannibal Corpse influenced, there are more grind elements included, making it stand out as more than a simple clone, but not too much more. The music isn’t complex; it’s just heavy and relentless, which can be both great and annoying at the same time. Of the all of the Sepsism material, this is definitely among the best, it’s not that original or complex, but it is catchy and will stick in your head after you listen to it, unfortunately, the production is so bad it does make it almost completely unlistenable. If you are able to look past the shit production, it’s definitely a worthy pickup if you’re into mid-90s brutal death metal, like Deaden, early Dying Fetus, Cannibal Corpse and the like, but I’d still recommend you just pick up the re-issue of Severe Carnal Butchery instead.

Written By: Teufel