Review by Carl on May 10, 2026.

In the second half of the 90's, I heard the name Mastic Scum quite often, and because I hadn't heard any music by them at that point, I always had the assumption that they were a grindcore band in the vein of Agathocles. After I bought this EP from a hardcore/crust distro having a clearance sale, I finally got to hear the band, and I was pretty disappointed that this wasn't grindcore at all. Turned out that on "Ephemeral Cerebral Butchery", Mastic Scum played full-on underground death metal, and being the greasy noisenik I was, that stuff was way too musical for this guy. Which was very ignorant of me, because this stuff actually rips.

After a pretty redundant intro that goes on for too long, 'borrowed' off the soundtrack to "Bram Stoker's Dracula" by the way, Mastic Scum spews forth a brand of dense death metal steeped in a murky yet fitting sound mix, with the band combining slower stomp with primitive blastbeat propelled moments of velocity. Because of the low grunts and sickly guitar riffs, I am regularly reminded of old Finnish death metal bands such as Funebre and Purtenance, with bands like Imprecation, Rottrevore, and Infester coming to mind as well, with Mastic Scum sounding equally as obscure as the acts mentioned above. With the overall grainy production being what it is on this EP, there are some moments where the music tends to get a tad messy and chaotic, with the drums drowning in the guitars somewhat in the more uptempo parts, creating a slightly confusing sonic mush. It's nothing all that disastrous, though; the guitar work is solid and transparent enough not to lose track completely here. After all, it's the imperfections that make this type of early 90's underground death metal so endearing. Well, to me it does, at least.

Despite the fact that the production leaves something to be desired, I dig this. As with a lot of these death metal releases from days gone by, enthusiasm and passion clearly win over things such as technical prowess and productional shine, and that's where stuff like this grabs me. I'll admit that Mastic Scum does sound somewhat anonymous or even faceless on this EP. There were a lot of similar-sounding bands around back then, but that doesn't abate my enjoyment of "Ephemeral Cerebral Butchery" one bit. To put it in a few words: I'm glad I gave this record a second chance. Later on, Mastic Scum indeed skirted a lot closer to grindcore, as well as adding elements of thrash and crust to the mix, creating a more focused form of what they were doing. From what I heard of their later output, it sounded sharper and more on point than the rumbling underground death metal on their first EP, yet without the youthful charm that is so firmly present on their earliest material.

If the recent wave of downtuned death/doom bands has your interest, I'd say to give Mastic Scum's first EP a chance, too. It may not be the most original or essential release out there, but it's certainly worth the effort of checking out at least once.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10