It's definitely a smell that you can taste, and the stink of rotting flesh and the acrid bite of putrefaction lingers up your nose and worms its way into the back of your throat.
Look, you have to appreciate the difference here. Your god commands fear and demands absolute obedience. Mine offers a decent job with good hours and reasonable pay, asks nicely when something comes up, and is perfectly understanding when someone shows up to work undead and with a large octopus glued to her head. Sometimes we just have bad days.