PUSTILENCE set release date for MEMENTO MORI / ROTTED LIFE debut, reveal first track

On April 24th internationally, Memento Mori in conspiracy with Rotted Life will release Pustilence‘s highly anticipated debut album, Beliefs of Dead Stargazers and Soothsayers, on CD and cassette tape/digital formats, respectively. Rotted Life will also release the vinyl version later in the year.

Hailing from Brisbane, Australia’s Pustilence formed in late 2018 and soon became a three-headed vermin that proudly brought forward mind-warping death metal madness of a most mid-’90s vintage. The band’s first public recording, 2020’s The Birth of the Beginning Before the Inception of the End, was a short & sweet 15-minute vortex of melted leads, impossible tempo changes, and truly putrid vocals. The EP suitably received various pressings by various labels, and showed Pustilence as worthy successors to the cult likes of Oppressor, Morta Skuld, Gutted, and Psychic Pawn.

Still, the best was yet to come, and now it arrives with their long-awaited full-length: Beliefs of Dead Stargazers and Soothsayers. With their lineup now expanded to a quartet, Pustilence proceed to obliterate past, present, and future. While bearing the same sturdy template as the preceding EP, Pustilence‘s debut album explodes and expands in every direction: leads are even more melted and madness-inducing, the tempo changes are crazier and more slamming, the vocals gurgle with supernatural clarity, and their songwriting on the whole bristles with an excitement and electricity that’s rare these days. Granted, it’s staunchly and unapologetically DEATH METAL – and those very same cult names are still invoked – but Pustilence put just the right amount of uniqueness to their dread creations that makes the whole 11-song/46-minute work plausible and reverential. Further, the band more fully flesh out their fantastical and obscured lyrical themes, bringing form and content together with alchemical ease. Which is to say nothing of the absolutely amazing production here: CRUSHING yet clear, each instrument rendered in 3D tones but never sacrificing the inherent rawness of true human performance. No typewriter or popcorn bullshit here – just classic, effortlessly old-school death metal that adds to the glorious tradition rather than lazily picks at its bones.

From caveman breakdowns to rude angularity, haunting half-melodies to blunt force trauma, Pustilence prepare to take the death metal underground by literal storm with Beliefs of Dead Stargazers and Soothsayers.

In the meantime, hear the brand-new track “Outwith the Plains of Ultimatum” here:

Cover and tracklisting are as follows:

Tracklisting for Pustilence’s Beliefs of Dead Stargazers and Soothsayers
CAPITULUM CUPIDITAS
I. Aspirants of Intemperance
II. Profound Assiduity
III. Concupiscence

CAPITULUM COGNITIO
IV. Iliad to the Contorted Apprehension
V. Outwith the Plains of Ultimatum
VI. Procured Propensities
VII. Pishogue Thaumaturge

CAPITULUM VICTORUM
VIII. An Ode to the Eyes That Are Yellow
IX. Demiurge Divertissement
X. Extirpated Conquest
XI. Testament of Disarray