For God Your Soul...For Me Your Flesh

For God Your Soul...For Me Your Flesh finds Pungent Stench at its most perverse; from the gory cover art to the music's lyrics, this is the sort of stuff that is downright corruptive! Beneath all of the shocking "splatter metal" attributes -- not to mention some brutal grindcore-like death metal and absolutely crazed growling -- one can only hope that the group isn't serious and that this is poorly (or perfectly) executed satire. Of course, the problem lies in the fact that the group doesn't give many clear-cut signs of satire, making it questionable whether or not it truly is demented -- if so, the most disturbing part of the album is the thought that these people exist in the world! So, like Cannibal Corpse and early Carcass, Pungent Stench seems focused on challenging the listener with harsh perversities that tend to center mostly on gore and sex. For many fans of this style of music, the aforementioned attributes are enough to make this a noteworthy release, but those strictly interested in songwriting might not be as impressed. On the group's succeeding albums, Been Caught Buttering and Club Mondo Bizarre, Pungent Stench makes its satire a little more clear and enjoyable and also focuses more on songwriting than sheer brutality, making this album inferior in comparison, even if it is the band's most extreme. [Note that the original version of this album (with its cover depicting two severed arms and a skull) released in 1990 included ten bonus tracks of hard-to-find early Pungent Stench recordings, including the Extreme Deformity EP and the group's LP split with Disharmonic Orchestra, making it superior to the re-release.]