Milwaukee’s underground death metal scene just got a fresh dose of filth, and the perpetrators are none other than Horrid Mass. Long heralded as “the grimiest and nastiest that death metal can be,” the Brew City crew has unleashed their latest auditory plague: Nauseating Ecstatic Degeneration. Consider yourself warned, and possibly already infected.

If you’ve caught Horrid Mass in the wild — sweating it out at Cactus Club or rattling the walls of any number of Milwaukee’s basement-show institutions — then you already know what you’re in for. This is death metal stripped of polish and pretense, the kind that thrives on cavernous riffs, gurgling vocals, and a production aesthetic that feels like it was recorded inside a dumpster behind a meatpacking plant. In other words: exactly how it should sound.

Nauseating Ecstatic Degeneration leans hard into the band’s signature ethos. There’s no attempt to clean things up for the algorithm here, no melodic interludes designed to court Spotify playlists. What you get instead is a relentless slab of Midwestern death metal that takes cues from the genre’s most loathsome corners — think the swampy density of early Autopsy mingling with the bottom-feeding crawl of Finnish death metal, all filtered through Milwaukee’s notoriously DIY ethos.

For longtime fans of Milwaukee’s heavy underground, this release is another reminder that the city’s metal output continues to punch well above its weight class. Horrid Mass isn’t here to chase trends — they’re here to bury them under six feet of sonic rot. And honestly? That’s the most refreshing thing a death metal band can do in 2026.

Stream Nauseating Ecstatic Degeneration in full below, and if you’ve got the stomach for it, grab a copy directly from the band on Bandcamp. Your speakers may never forgive you, but your tape-trading buddies will thank you.