PUTRID VOMIT CHRIST – Perpetual Intercourse

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6.5

Putrid Vomit Christ's first studio EP, “Perpetual Intercourse”, is a work that does not go unnoticed, starting from the name of the Vietnamese duo. Behind this very sober moniker lies a decidedly young project, born in 2024, which engages in rough, cavernous death-doom metal, but not without melodic ideas.
From the first listen, it is clear that the Hanoi musicians have a wealth of influences rooted in old school death and death-doom metal: the homages to Incantation are immediately recognizable in certain particularly angular riffs and in some accelerations, but the true soul and the most interesting ideas of the work emerge in the most essential and rhythmic sections, often enlivened by frequent solo guitar interventions, for a mix that is very reminiscent of the early works of Hooded Menace. A track like the opener “Vacuous Ecstasy” is exemplary in this sense: with its groovy streak and the mischievous airs that emerge from the guitar work, we immediately come across an episode that is anything but monotonous, which adds depth and dynamism to the tracklist.
The main limitation of “Perpetual Intercourse” however lies in the use of the drum machine: a real drum would probably have given greater incisiveness and a more organic feeling to the whole, supporting that vintage warmth that the duo seems to want to evoke.
From a stylistic point of view, the EP is instead a terrain of exploration rather than an identity manifesto. The five tracks – all moderately structured, with a duration ranging from five to eight minutes – oscillate between clearly recognizable influences, with some bursts of panache that sometimes allow a glimpse of the duo's potential. These flashes of melody suggest that, with time and greater stylistic awareness, the Vietnamese band may be developing a more defined and personal identity.
Despite some imperfections, “Perpetual Intercourse” is, in short, a rather promising debut: the duo demonstrates that they have solid foundations and good compositional intuition, as well as an evident passion for the genre. It is clear that Putrid Vomit Christ are still in the experimental phase, but this vague lack of cohesion is in its way a demonstration of musical curiosity, which does not undermine too much the foundations of a work that can be seen as an interesting taste of what might come in the future; a window onto a nascent project, with good potential, which is just waiting to be fully realized.