Septic Tank - Rotting Civilisation (Album Review)

Septic Tank - Rotting Civilisation

Track Listing:

01. Septic Tank

02. Who

03. Victimised

04. Social Media Whore

05. Divide & Conk Out

06. Treasurers of Disease

07. Fucked

08. Whitewash

09. Death Vase

10. You Want Some

11. Digging Your Own Grave

12. Danger Signs

13. Walking Asylum

14. Lost Humanity

15. Never Never Land

16. Self Obsessed

17. Living Death

18. Rotten Empire

Lee Dorrian – Vocals (Cathedral, With The Dead)

Gary Jennings – Guitar (Cathedral, Death Penalty)

Scott Carlson – Bass (Cathedral, Repulsion)

Jaime Gómez Arellano – Drums (Blutvial)

Originally a side project for Cathedral in 1994 as a low-key chance to play with some Discharge style punk/metal as opposed to the Doom laden sounds that Dorrian & Co mixed up with some added Psych and prog.

Septic Tank’s original line-up featured Dorrian & Jennings from Cathedral with drummer Barry Stern (ex-Trouble) and Repulsion’s Scott Carlson on bass.

“We talked about doing it again many times, but it took us 20 years to make a record,” Lee Dorrian explains. “As you know, Scott re-joined Cathedral for the last few gigs and the last album. We were recording (final Cathedral record) The Last Spire at the end of 2012 and we’d done all we needed to do and had some spare time in the studio. So we revived the Septic Tank idea and literally bashed out an entire EP, writing and recording, in an afternoon, in just six hours.”

The result of this brief resurgence was 2013’s self-titled seven-inch EP, released only in Japan and limited to 900 copies.

With Lee, Gaz and Scott now joined by drummer (and legendary producer) Jamie ‘Gomez’ Arellano it seemed only a matter of time before something new happened, so after 20 years they finally recorded an album in just five days.

“It’s quite mad that we’re finally releasing an album,” Lee concludes. “I don’t think most people know that this band exists! But you never lose your passion for this stuff. It’s just in our DNA and our veins, really. Like with most things, we’ll put it out there and see what happens, but we’d like to do more records and I’m sure there’ll be more shows too. We’re chuffed to be doing it!”

So take the opening track and it’s a full on assault of super fuzzed out hardcore death metal, yep you can see the punk influence and even dare I say harking back to those early Napalm Death days, yet even in this opening number there is a hint of doom lurking!

Next couple of tracks do the same thing really, then up comes ‘Social Media Whore’, now this one has a definite Hellhammer meets Discharge feel, great bit of noise really.

‘Divide & Conk Out’ sounds like Tank and Motorhead, neat little guitar solo thrown in just to top it off.

Great doom intro to ‘Death Vase’ and have to say Mr. Dorrian does a great impression of Tom Warrior! Fucking awesome crushing, slow and pounding, definitely my favourite track thus far.

Then with ‘You Want Some’ some proper old school skuzzy punk metal, this style continues on for the next few tracks until we arrive at some proto thrash punk with ‘Never Never Land’ and right to the last song continues in this vein.

To sum up I have to once again commend Mr Dorrian for his talent, ability and knowledge of all things “Rock ‘N’ Roll”  and finding the right musicians to be able to take something that is essentially retro/old school and make it fresh, modern and bloody enjoyable!

Rating 9/10

For Fans of:  Discharge, Warfare, Ravens Creed, Hellhammer, Charged GBH, Venom