The 2004 album Damned And Mummified from Californian death metal mutants Abcess is back in stock after a period of unavailability, and it's an essential chapter in the career of this terminally weird side project from members of death metal legends Autopsy. The songs on Damned... are loaded with hideous doom-laden psychedelic death metal slime, at times reminiscent of Autopsy, but with weird gasping, snarling vocals that are run through an exorbitant amount of delay and other effects, lurching primitive death metal riffs find themselves reshaped into monstrously stoned Sabbathian grooves, insanely dissonant guitar solos and discordant almost Voivod-ian riffs, and lots of weird effects and noises. There are a number of tracks on here where Abscess get into their bulldozing sludgy hardcore punk modem, like "Swallow The Venom", "Tattoo Collector" and the bludgeoning title track, and there's an equal amount of crushing doom death and raging tribal drum freak outs strewn throughout this disc. It also has one of my favorite Abscess songs, "Twilight Bleeds", which has the band mixing together haunting doom-laden lead guitars and sludgy, lurching doom with a trippy mess of bizarre noises, maniacal gargles, bluesy soloing, and even some backing acoustic guitar and a couple of bursts of brutal hardcore that all adds up to one of their heaviest, catchiest tracks. They reached a pinnacle of glorious other-dimensional weirdness on their swan song Dawn Of Inhumanity, but this is still a killer disc from these death sludge freaks, and the music on Damned... continues to suggest to me what Celtic Frost could have sounded like if they had eaten a ton of mushrooms during their recording sessions. Anyone into offbeat death metal who isn't already a fan of Abscess should check them out ASAP. Oh, and the artwork on this disc is terrific; it's got a mix of bizarre drawings from Abscess front man Chris Reifert (which always have this weird Boiled Angel vibe) and illustrations from the masterful Dennis Dread on the cover.