by Jason Birchmeier
Following the For God Your Soul...For Me Your Flesh LP and the Extreme Deformity EP, Pungent Stench's second album, Been Caught Buttering, garnered the group considerable attention in the morbid death metal/grindcore underground, more because of their perversities than for their music. The cover art surely caught many eyeballs in record stores and magazine ads, and as a Nuclear Blast album, this release was widely distributed; furthermore, song titles such as "Shrunken and Mummified Bitch" and "Splatterday Night Fever" also helped the album appeal to a particular niche market. Yet musically, this album wasn't quite as intriguing as its exploitative imagery. Practicing a shoddy style of almost-grindcore death metal, the band's strongest attribute is their vocalist, who sounds way too earnest with his malevolent, demonic growling. Still, fans of splatter metal will be hard-pressed to find many albums that are better than this.