Azaab are a death metal band from Pakistan and this is their debut album.
Summoning the Catalysm features 38 minutes of professional death metal. It’s brutal and aggressive, and boasts both technical flourishes and progressive enhancements, all delivered in a lean 38 minutes, (and there’s a decent Decapitated cover too).
This is an album of texture and flavour. The band’s music has a variety of different components, all of which are artfully subsumed into their accomplished brand of well-written death metal. Azaab’s material combines aspects of brutality, technicality, and melody, to produce songs that are substantial and satisfying works. Progressive ingredients further enrich the band’s recipe, making for a tasty and satiating meal.
The songs can be brutal and riff-centric one moment, rich in progressive atmosphere the next, and enthused with technical intensity after that. Each song carries a diversity of influences that are distilled into furious and weighty death metal songs by talented hands; this may only be Azaab’s debut album, but it is very well-performed and executed.
There’s an old-school heart beating beneath the waves of barbed distortion and merciless drum beats. The band’s technical side is born from older times than these current ones, although the more recent years are not completely ignored; Azaab take what they want from where they want, and they make wise choices with what to do with it all too.
While all of the band members shine throughout this record, the guitarists, (and various guest soloists), are the stars of the show in many ways. These songs are packed with crushing riffs, meaty rhythms, melodic hooks, and killer solos. The latter especially deserve praise.
Fans of bands like Nile, Morbid Angel, Deicide, Hypocrisy, and Immolation should pay close attention to Summoning the Cataclysm. Azaab have produced a scorching, highly enjoyable slab of charismatic death metal.
Very highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 