Pungent Stench’s 1991 underground Death Metal classic album remastered! “Been Caught Buttering” achieves greatness not by expanding upon or pushing forward the Death Metal genre, but by distilling it. Here is death metal embodied: buzzsaw guitars threaten to slice through limb, drums are hit with the precision and care of a killer clubbing his victim, the bass throbs underneath like the pulse of some monstrous beast, solos rip through the din without warning, depraved tales are recited in a maniacal bark, and everything is sloshed in terrible, fetid grime. As far as ruthless, muck-encrusted death, its only rival is “Mental Funeral” by Autopsy. This is elemental, admirable for its purity of vision. As definitive as this sophomore album is, it’s also unique, both in Pungent Stench’s discography and in Death Metal as a whole. Nothing is quite like it, which is hinted at before you even hear it. Joel-Peter Witkin returns as cover artist, with the piece “The Kiss”, a photograph of a cadaver head split down the middle and the two halves laid side by side as if caught in an amorous embrace. Witkin’s work is suitably repulsive, but with enough artistry to elevate it above the legions of goregrind covers created. Musically, there’s an undercurrent of Rock. Unlike Death ‘N’ Roll bands (such as Pungent Stench became on their subsequent album) who make rock music with Death Metal trappings, “Been Caught Buttering” bends and contorts rock to fit within its twisted framework. Just as the cover takes a familiar and innocent image and perverts it into something dreadful, the band employ well-worn tropes to devious ends. The Pungent Stench discography is very diverse in its quality. There are other high points, but none to match this, not that one could reasonably expect a band to attain this quality once, let alone multiple times. When asked what this death metal thing is about, our answer is simply to play “Been Caught Buttering”. If you worship at the altars of ungodly splatter, if you regularly have sonic sewage oozing from your headphones and your buttering has as of yet gone undetected, it’s high time you get yourself caught.
