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Pungent Stench – Ampeauty
Album | 13/09/2004 | Nuclear Blast
57:09 | 10 tracks | Vinyl/CD/Digital
Death Metal
Vienna, Austria

Gore, Sex and Conspiracies
On their fifth studio album Ampeauty, Vienna’s Pungent Stench have decreased the speed and increased the groove instead. It was also the last album with bass player Reverend Mausna and drummer Rector Stench. And as often, Pungent Stench as a band were somewhere between disbanding, re-forming, and staying together. The album’s theme is acrotomophilia, i.e. the sexual attraction towards amputees, together with apetomnophilia, which is the desire to be an amputee oneself. Pungent Stench present the theme in several short but very precisely-told narratives. They combine horror fiction, real-life gore, and embroidery to create highly graphic content. Besides the theme, political topics like conspiracy theories (Invisible Empire) play a secondary role.
Fountains of Blood
Ampeauty is a masterpiece of Gore an Death Metal. Pungent Stench combine black humour with a sense for taboo and transgression, and serve this mix on a plate dripping with blood. The mid-tempo Death Metal sound used here makes El Cochino’s distinctive vocals stick out even more, and the instrumental section is defined by a sonorous, room-filling sound. From the ideas to songwriting, and from production to wrapping, Ampeauty is a step into the deepest chasms of humankind.
9/10 Mangoes
Next week in this series:
Sparks – Kimono My House (01/05/1974 | Island Records)
We will dance again
Mia Schem