Serpent Corpse are a Canadian death metal band and this is their latest EP.
I thoroughly enjoyed 2023’s Blood Sabbath, so am pleased to have this new EP from Serpent Corpse. Retaliate contains 26 minutes of new material – four tracks of hideous old-school death metal for fans of the good stuff. On Retaliate Serpent Corpse have pushed themselves further, with longer songs and a wider breadth of deathly vision.
Serpent Corpse play old-school death metal, with a helping of doom and thrash, a touch of punk, and a freshly developing progressive edge. These are all injected into the rotten cadaver of the music in key places, enhancing the core of the band’s death metal – ancient and inviolate.
Brazen Serpent opens the EP, with doom darkness and squealing guitars. The song stalks the listener like a predator, bringing a selection of grim riffs and macabre atmospheres to overwhelm them with. It’s a mix of the Swedish death metal sound and the Autopsy style, and it’s a slow burning monster.
Iron Corpse destroys right from the start, but after a couple of minutes reveals a striking section that’s pure heavy metal, with epic leads that strike right at the heart, before unleashing an old-school thrash section that reminds me of early Sepultura. It’s damn good stuff. Serpent Corpse have a few different things going on here, and it’s a good example of the band branching out from their core sound, while still staying true to it. By the end of Iron Corpse, Serpent Corpse have loudly proclaimed that they will happily do what they want in the quest for death metal mastery, and smash through anyone or anything in their way.
The next track is The Undying, a song that’s atmospheric and crushing. It’s death/doom combined with a thrashy heart and pulverising riffs. It’s surprisingly catchy, and I’m a big fan of the morbid feel it has.
Retaliate closes with the nine-minute Meteor Summon, which provides the band the opportunity to stretch out their sound further. It’s structured well, leading the listener through caverns of weeping sores, avalanches of brutal granite, and dark landscapes of atmospheric menace. The latter is particularly effective, with ominous keyboards layering the music about the halfway mark, before leading into the rest of the song that’s part progressive workout, and part nightmare ordeal. It’s these sort of moments that showcase the increasing confidence that Serpent Corspe have.
Retaliate is a strong release from a band that seem to be in the process of progressing their sound. It’s an enjoyable EP that may potentially end up being seen as a transitory phase between what the band where and whatever might come next. Of course, maybe it’s just a random experiment, and they’ll ditch the extra ideas soon enough. Either way, I look forward to what Serpent Corpse submit us to in the future.
Very highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 