Review: Pulpit Vomit – Hospital Lens
Ok, so I’m on a bit of a grind kick. But can we just talk about the fact that Pulpit Vomit may have just wretched out one of the best grindcore releases, secular or Christian, in recent memory?
Formed in 2022 and composed of members of death metal act Mangled Carpenter, Pulpit Vomit released a series of singles that admittedly didn’t catch my eye. I say eye, because I judged a book by its cover. With songs like the Christmas-themed “Jingle, Jingle, Jingle” and “Turkey Annihilation,” I figured the band was simply a parody act and left it at that. Zip ahead to 2025, and suddenly, I’m confronted by a band that’s anything but.
The band’s first full-length album, Hospital Lens, is at once a bizarre prospect. A roughly sixteen-minute concept album based on the fictional rants of what seems to be an asylum inmate named “Patient 103,” the tracks unfold like a disturbing dream would, scenes and images crashing into each other in a storm of barely-connected chaos. Even if the concept/narrative is lost on you, the music is pure grind bliss.
You get about a half a second before the first track almost clean rips your head off. And it’s awesome. And it continues like that. Everything that makes grindcore music so riveting and intense is somehow here packed into a tiny 16-minute micro-storm of full-on chaos. Pulpit Vomit’s sonic madness spans the gamut of influences – Wormrot’s Dirge, Pig Destroyer’s Prowler in the Yard, Timoratus’ 7 Deadly Sins and Napalm Death’s Enemy of the Music Business. It’s the audial equivalent of being stuck in a padded cell with a maniac that’s trying to throttle you and tell you a story all at the same time. Frankly, it’s nuts. It’s also dynamic, possessed of an unhinged, explosive energy that refuses to allow the listener to pay anything but absolutely full-attention. If you’re not forming a circle pit in your living room by about ten seconds into this album, you might want to check and make sure you have a pulse. Only one track, “Blank Stares in Fluorescent Light” is a bit of a misfire for me, as it almost functions like pulling the e-brake on a car going full speed down the highway. It’s a minor criticism, but worth noting anyway, nitpicker that I am.
So what’s the Christian angle to these guys? Well, they’re not as blatant about it on here as they are with Mangled Carpenter, but it’s there for those who are wondering. Grindcore, given its punk and hardcore roots, always seems to have a penchant for critical approaches to any form of societal/political/institutional structures, and Pulpit Vomit is no exception, even though it’s not the centre of their attention. I’m sure you don’t need me to “unpack” the lyrics to “Spewing Vomit From the Pulpit” – church corruption, hypocritical priests/pastors, and the like are the target here. “Midnight Nun” is a strange tale of a religious sister’s betrayal of her vows; again, the hypocrisy angle. If you dug the lyrics of bands like Flesh Incineration and Rehumanize, you’ll be in comfortable territory here. When the band is at their best, I find, is with lyrics like these from “The Filth” – “But somewhere beyond this decay a whisper – small and burning calls from the void a voice of old a hand unseen reaching” that echo 1 Kings 9:11-12.
What drives me crazy is the sad fact that, as insanely awesome as this record is, Christian bands always have such an uphill battle when it comes to gaining fans and critical respect in the metal mainstream. That said, Pulpit Vomit have been getting rave reviews of this work all over the place, and it’s refreshing to see. If you find yourself enamoured with grindcore icons like Pig Destroyer and Wormrot, or maybe are just a serious grind freak, let me put it to you plainly: you need this record in your collection.
As I always like to say: MANDATORY LISTENING.
For Fans Of: Wormrot, Nasum, Napalm Death, Pig Destroyer, Timoratus, Long Suffering
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