A long six years after death metal's nastiest band spewed the sarcastic hatred of Posthumous Humiliation upon the world, the boys are back! And it doesn't take much time with Malignant Worthlessness to feel as grimy and dirty as before, even without bathing in the meaty swamp depicted on the album cover (no, I don't know what it is, and no, I don't want to know either). As before, this is a filthy, ugly style of death metal happily chundering along in the gutter, as content with barely coherent samples as it is blasting through a post-early-Carcass faecal eruption. And as before, it's hard to recommend on that basis, although fellow sickos out there will admit there's a certain something to the rotten flesh stench that Pissgrave give off, making them more than a hipster flavour of the week and something altogether fitting the extreme metal moniker.

The music itself has a depth of flavour worthy of prolonged inspection, feeling a little fresher and even more technical than past outings. Although that is still a very subjective description; the drums a rattling blast, the guitars grinding and punishing if not without neck-exercising qualities, and the vocals heavily distorted gasps and growls that are more or less unintelligible as the work of man. So obviously, grind and death metal freaks interested in the darker end of the genre should enjoy this, the likes of Dissident Amputator having a compellingly cavemanlike chugging that tugs your metal senses.

Yet elsewhere the likes of Interment Orgy and Lamentation of Weeping Wounds gallop rottenly with little to distinguish them on the surface, and it would take plenty of listens to find this anything approaching catchiness. Generally tracks such as In Heretic Blood Christened barrel along with more aggression than depth, Three Degrees of Darkness managing to climb atop the mountain of fleshy sameness with a near war metal-level of viciousness towards the listener as it speeds relentlessly. The title track, too, thanks to a slower pace and an almost deathgrind feel to the riffing, mimicked on the whirring misery of Heaping Pile of Electrified Gore. You can be forgiven, however, for finding this all a bit disgusting and not entertaining enough to the listener to be worth pursuing. And perhaps it's from becoming over-familiarised with gore yet this third album from the project seems to be less shocking and effective than before - still worth hearing for fans of depravity in death metal form, of course!