Descent are an Australian death metal act and this is their second album.
Order of Chaos offers a tight 30 minutes of punishing death metal. Smashing together HM-2-influenced death metal with ferocious grindcore and caustic punk, Descent’s second album is a vicious beast.
The music is a feast of violent riffs and murderous blasts. The songs are scathingly brutal and mercilessly harsh. The chunky, heavy guitars crush and destroy, while the vocalist savagely chews up the material with a surprisingly rich and varied performance. Within the intensity of the music lies occasional nods to melody or macabre atmosphere, and these are well-placed and effective. The bulk of the music is relentlessly aggressive though, so when these well-textured moments appear they are notable.
Inspired by the HM-2 chainsaw style of Swedish death metal this may be, it is a much more feral interpretation of this than the norm. The grind and punk elements, along with the production values, make the music much more of a modern proposition than is usual for something with the HM-2 tag. Descent have unleashed a brutal album that should appeal to fans of All Pigs Must Die as much as it should Earth Rot.
Order of Chaos is a solid and enjoyable slab of contemporary heaviness. Death metal, grind, and hardcore elements have come together very well under Descent’s capable watch, and the band have shaped these component parts into a lethal collection of tracks.
Highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 