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
