Pestigore's story is a familiar one for any fan of Finnish death metal, certainly familiar to anyone like myself who lived through the first wave. The formed around the start in 1990, only released a few demos, and split up in 1993 due to being drowned out by the sheer volume of quality bands taking the spotlight, definitely enough for me to not catch them back in the day. They reportedly reformed around 2015, but since then haven't made any new material and certainly haven't released anything else. Enter Headsplit Records, who took those old demos and put them together into this compilation, along with some rehearsal material from around that time to finally give the band the kind of chance they simply didn't get the first time around.

Anyone who's dealt with these kinds of compilations should know what to expect with Rotten Bowel of Pestigore, but for anyone else, do not expect anything fancy or pretty here. This is Finnish death metal done the old way, raw, brutal, grinding, and absolutely revolting to anyone with common sense and good taste, both of which fans like myself sorely lack. There's not much more to it than that, and anyone who's heard the early works of Xysma and Disgrace already has a good idea of what this is, which is likely why they got drowned out in the first place despite some decent praise at the time. Still, as a time capsule of this era of Finnish metal, this is a fun look back at the bad old days for fans and a perfectly good introduction to the scene for anyone else, which makes Pestigore a band worth digging up and praising long past their supposed expiration date.