"Slough Of Despair" is the debut album from the Italian death metal band, SLUDGE KEEPER. This project is the brainchild of Andrea Tocchetto. His role in the band is not officially known, but with the drummer and bassist roles being filled, one can infer that Tocchetto plays guitars and provides vocals for the band. It is also not known whether Paradis and Mastrobuono are band members or appear on the album as session musicians. The album was released on July 14, 2023, on Selfmadegod Records. The label's Bandcamp page describes its sound in this way. "Finding inspiration from the narrative universe of Doom, Sludge Keeper proposes a direct death metal in the veins of HATE ETERNAL, MORBID ANGEL with some atmospheric and mid tempo openings without neglecting outbursts and peaks of sulphurous violence." The album gets off to a bombastic and punishing start with Coelacanth. They forego any semblance of introduction and get right to the point. While punishing and brutal, the guitar riff that drives the song is basic. There's a nice lead guitar solo with some scales, but ultimately we've heard this overall sound before from countless other bands. The album is, for the most part, standard fare.

They begin the fourth track, "Tar Pit," with the intro music at a low volume that gets progressively louder. My issue with this is that the increase in volume isn't linear. It's as if someone is controlling your volume knob for dramatic effect in a stair-step fashion in unequal steps. It's easy to miss unless you're critically listening to the album, but it's there and it's annoying. This track comes off as disjointed, but not in a good way. There are several small parts that don't fit together well at all. There are two nice wailing lead guitar solos. They're just too similar to the solos in every other track. Another issue that I take is that this song stops abruptly with zero outro. That would be great if the following track, "Artifact," began with an intro. "Tar Pit" ends and, after a split second, we are thrown full-force into a completely different sonic landscape. It is disorienting, to say the least. The opening riff sounds great, then the instrumentation takes a turn for the melodic, but the vocals don't change to fit the song's current vibe. "Artifact" is a jumbled mess of a song that fails to separate itself from not only the other tracks on the album but from the entire death metal world itself. "Mud Keepers" suffers from the same issues that plague the album. The vocals aren't particularly engaging at all. The blast beat part in this track has what sounds like an out-of-place snare drum hit that sticks out like a sore thumb. It is easily overlooked, but once heard, it can never be unheard.

The final track, "Path To The Slough Of Despair," begins fast, aggressive, and chaotic. The track proceeds in the same way as the previous ones until the last two minutes. Then a doom metal riff plays and repeats itself infinitely while fading out at an excruciatingly slow speed, feeling like a separate boring filler "outro" track. Unfortunately, this album just didn't do it for me. Andrea Tocchetto hasn't brought anything new to the table. The instrumentation is competent for the high barrier of entry required of death metal, but questionable songwriting decisions, production decisions, and an unoriginal sound hold the album back. Admittedly, some of the issues that I take with the album are easily overlooked upon casual listens, but the lack of originality makes this one stick out negatively.