Death Metal – Page 187 – Wonderbox Metal

Loputon Suo – Loputon Suo (Review)

Loputon Suo are a Finnish Black Metal band and this is their début demo.

Lasting only 12 minutes, this is a dense, murky affair with elements of Melodic Black Metal and Death Metal included.

The vocals are bestial growls that are worryingly feral. They give the band a feeling of something dangerous and uncompromising. Decent riffs and a dark aura work with the melodic guitars in a complementary fashion.

When the ferocious growls are mixed with the atavistic music and Old-School melodies, something quite special emerges. This demo has an obscure and authentic feel above all else.

The recording is stripped back, raw and befitting of both the demo status and the style. However, that’s not to say it’s a bad sound, and it’s quite endearing in a harsh, violent way.

Very enjoyable. Check this out for your underground, Blackened fill.

Horrendous – Anareta (Review)

Horrendous are a US Death Metal band and this is their third album.

Playing Old-School/Traditional Death Metal, this is the follow-up to 2014’s impressive Ecdysis.

Following on from this previous release, Horrendous continue to offer a well-rounded Death Metal package, full of interesting riffs, decent melodies, intricate solos and actual well-thought-out songs.

Their approach to the material is refreshing, even given the Old-School nature of the music; it’s recognisable as instantly Old-School Death Metal but it doesn’t sound dated at all. Horrendous are one of the few bands that play this style who are trying to move it forwards rather than just wallowing in what was released decades ago.

There’s something deeply satisfying about this music. It demonstrates a band who are able to compose songs that have a lot of depth and atmosphere without ever devolving into filler-esque extremity or retro-parody. Horrendous have well and truly stamped their own personality and vision on a well-worn style.

Once again, the recording is warm and seems to pulsate with life. One of the things I enjoyed on Ecdysis was that you could hear the bass and on Anareta this is still the case.

The singer’s voice is still a pleasing mix of Obituary/Morbid Angel and he spends his time on Anareta providing a compelling focal point for the music.

On this latest album Horrendous demonstrate why they are quite rightly lauded as one of the best when it comes to this type of Death Metal. As much as I enjoyed Ecdysis I think on this latest album they’ve upped their game even more.

Impressive and essential.

Analepsy – Dehumanization by Supremacy (Review)

This is the début EP by Portuguese Brutal Death Metallers Analepsy.

This is a Slam Death Metal release that may only last 22 minutes but makes its presence known in no uncertain terms.

Deep pignoise vocals are the order of business, with the singer squealing and growling for his life.

The music is largely devoid of blast beats, (although not completely), but what they lack in speed they more than make up for in heaviness and intensity. These are short, violent tracks that feature a crushing collection of riffs rather than sped-up extremity for the sake of it. Heavy and brutal it may be, but it also teeters on the atmospheric on occasion, which is unexpected and great to hear.

There is some good writing on this short release, with some interesting ideas. Due to this, the band largely avoid becoming just Devourment/Dying Fetus clones and instead create songs that actually have a bit of longevity to them, which is saying a lot for many bands, never mind one of this style.

There’s a vibrant immediacy to these tracks that can’t be denied, and fans of Brutal Death Metal full of breakdowns and chugging heaviness should take note. If you can’t get enough of bands such as Coprocephalic and Infecting the Swarm then Analepsy should be another one who are high on your must-have list.

By God, this is enjoyable! It’s hard to form cogent thoughts when all you want to do is bounce around to their high energy carnage. Slick, professional and boasting an album cover that’s very striking, Analepsy have found a definite fan in me.

You should definitely get this one.

Iniquitous Savagery – Subversions of the Psyche (Review)

Iniquitous Savagery are a Death Metal band from the UK. This is their début album.

This is raw, underground Brutal Death Metal that’s just as comfortable grinding it out with a groovy riff as it is pounding along with blast beats.

The songs are well-written slabs of barbarism, but are not without a sense of dynamics and pacing. The band know full well when to take their collective feet off the accelerator and throw in some breakdowns or slower, crushing riffs to keep things interesting.

Subversions of the Psyche has a production that’s warm and wet, as if it’s covered in the blood of a fresh kill. It’s rough around the edges just enough to lend the music an air of the unstable without actually compromising the strength of the songs at all.

The deep growling vocals are what you’d expect for the style, but they’re performed well nonetheless. The singer has a quite satisfying growl that seems to share bandwidth with the guitars, working in sync with them to commit carnage in the name of suffering and mayhem.

There’s plenty of chug ‘n’ groove ‘n’ blast ‘n’ squeal ‘n’ breakdown on Subversions of the Psyche and it all adds up to a very gratifying experience for the listener. This is Brutal Death Metal from the underground, played with enthusiasm and love for the genre.

A recommended listen for fans of brutality.

Chained to the Dead – Born to Rot (Review)

Chained to the Dead are a US Death Metal band.

Take a look at the album cover. I dare you to guess what this sounds like. Actually, you might not be completely right. I, for example, expected ultra-brutal Death Metal with completely guttural pignoise vocals. Instead, this is a sharper and more precise form of carnage, more akin to Carcass than Brodequin.

Serrated, lacerated, rasping vocals lash out from the music, which itself sounds quite barbed and nasty. The band’s songs are well-written and much more surgical in their attentions than some of their peers. No-one would accuse them of not being brutal, of course, but it’s a different kind of brutality than a lot of Death Metal bands employ.

There’s also quite a bit of variety here, relatively speaking. Well-written songs and interesting riffs combine to produce memorable songs that are actually identifiable from each other quite quickly. In such a short release the band manage to pack in a lot of content and personality.

I also like their considered approach. The music has a sophistication that is shared by bands such as Carcass and Aborted, although the album cover totally denies this. It’s an interesting contrast, and I wonder where this will take Chained to the Dead in the future. I can image them dropping the primitive imagery and becoming even more state-of-the-art in their approach to slaughter. Only time will tell.

For the moment though, Born to Rot is a a surprisingly professional and well-realised 21 minutes of surgical violence that still loves a bit of gore on the side. Well, a lot of gore really, I suppose. Either way, the songs are good and the band have a bright future ahead of them if they can get the right exposure.

Top marks for this. Much more impressive than I was expecting. Check it out.

Temple of Baal – Mysterium (Review)

This is the fifth album from this French Black Metal band.

Their fourth album Verses of Fire was 61 minutes of top quality Extreme Metal and was a welcome experience that was a slight change of direction from their earlier, purer Black Metal approach. That album brought more Death Metal influences into the mix, although their Blackened side was still a huge component in their sound.

Fast-forward to 2015 and Mysterium relegates the Death Metal influences to the back seat and their Black Metal roots get to set the direction once more. This is not the more primitive Black/Thrash of their older work though; this is more refined, epic and gloriously sophisticated in its realisation. As such, the songs are generally longer and more involved than their previous averages, and the thick dark aura of the songs is cloying with its aggressive malevolence.

This release is full of Blackened riffs, blasting fury and evocative melodies. There’s a driving majesty that underpins each of the tracks on this album, so regardless of the particular style of music that makes up any given section it’s holistically all brought together by an iron will and a coherent vision. This shouldn’t give the impression of an album that’s “all-over-the-place” or struggling to find an identity as there’s none of that here. Rather, this is sophisticated Black Metal that still takes influences from Death and Thrash Metal, but they’re subsumed into the overarching Blackened style and whatever the band does with these influences is consistent and reasonable within the confines of their sound.

These songs are well-written advanced exemplars of the style and each one brings something extra to the table.

The vocals are dark growling screams, perfectly suited to the environment they find themselves in.

The production of the album is a strong one; it’s huge and powerful yet manages to maintain the feeling of raw, restrained chaos and fettered Blackened evil that the songs exude as easily as breathing.

I was a fan of Versus of Fire, but this is better. The progression of their sound is welcome and it seems that Temple of Baal are one of those bands that are always looking to better themselves and to see what they can do better or different next time. It’s not a massive change in style, of course, but it’s enough to make Mysterium into an extremely compelling and engaging listen.

Overall, this album is a triumph and really, really strong. However, there are times on this release when they really outdo themselves. Sometimes, when the drums are blasting, the rhythm guitars are full of emotive darkness and the leads are exotic and powerful…well…it’s just a hair-raising experience.

Great stuff. I’m very happy with Mysterium.

Display of Decay – Dust of Existence (Review)

Dust of Decay are a Canadian Death Metal band and this is their second album.

This is Brutal Death Metal that wastes no time on pointless intros or messing around; the album starts with a bang and is all about the aggression and violence.

Display of Decay’s brand of brutality involves nods towards the Old-School as well as worshipping at the more timeless brand of thick, groove-laden Death Metal skullduggery so beloved of bands like Deeds of Flesh, Cannibal Corpse and Suffocation.

The album has a good production; it’s raw and dry enough to fit nicely in with the underground, but strong and focused enough to have a powerful presence. I love the sound of the bass too; scratchy and omnipresent without being overpowering. It’s as if it’s saying “Yes, I’m here. I’ll be the end of you, too”.

There’s a good combination of blasting, mid-paced groove and slower sections that have a definite Doom vibe to them, akin to bands like Incantation, Zombiefication and Hooded Menace. The songs are well-written and there are plenty of decent riffs hanging around, like torture implements waiting to be used.

Dust of Existence is a really enjoyable Death Metal album that succeeds in avoiding being a faceless drone in a sea of similar bands and instead has a personality and character that’s very pleasing to see.

Blow the dust away and crank out Display of Decay at full volume.

Visceral Throne – Those Who Have Fallen Beyond the Grace of God (Review)

Visceral Throne are a Death Metal band from the US. This is their second release.

The band play Brutal Death Metal, for fans of bands such as Defeated Sanity, Internal Bleeding, Suffocation, Visceral Bleeding, Birth Through Gore, Abnormality, etc.

This latest EP features 5 tracks, three of which are original songs, one is an intro and the last is a cover of an Internal Suffering track. At 14 minutes in length it’s short, but who needs it to be any longer when it’s this ripping and slamming and blasting and stuff?

The songs get in, do their damage, and then get out; quick, clean and efficient. There are quite a few meaty chops to go around and the guitarist seems to know his stuff. The bass sound warms my heart too, as it’s always nice to hear this oft-neglected instrument. Little spikes of melody do appear here and there, but these are very few and far between.

The singer’s brutal growling is quite daemonic and inhuman, exactly as we would expect from a band like this. He’s clearly had plenty of practice, and it shows.

This is a good introduction to a band I didn’t know before. It’s a small-but-satisfying release that showcases a Brutal Death Metal band who play the classic American style well.

Check them out.

Gloom – Doggod (Review)

Gloom are a Spanish Death Metal band and this is their second album.

Gloom play Brutal Death Metal with a Blackened element that allows them to add a viciously melodic edge to their unrelentingly savage assault.

Vocally, we get grunting, pignoise and serrated screams. It’s an impressive display of violence and the various voices are all used when they need to be to wrench up the brutality.

Gloom know how to maximise the extremity of the music while retaining a dynamic approach to songwriting so that the listener doesn’t get bored of listening to the same thing over and over again.

Although they boast an undeniably barbaric core, the Black Metal influence allows the band to add an entire other layer to their assault, with ugly, Blackened riffs and evil atmospheres pervading the songs like an infection.

It’s an interesting approach, as the blasting mayhem is tempered by the malevolent atmosphere in such a way that these two aspects of the band seem at war with each other over which way is best to flay you. This is completely to the listener’s benefit though, as it results in songs that have a creative violence to them that is lacking in many extreme bands.

Imagine a more brutal, Blackened Behemoth, mixed with the hybrid assault of a band like Gloria Morti or Anaal Nathrakh and drenched in the filth of underground Brutal Death Metal…this is where Gloom lurk.

The production allows the band to showcase all of this and everything is pleasingly balanced. Fast or slow the band sound great, but manage to avoid becoming overly polished or sterile. This is music that has a foetid warmth that you can feel as it guts you.

These tracks really are an impressive collection of songs, and there are more interesting ideas and quirks of extremity on this album than a lot of bands manage in a career.

Highly recommended. The more I listen to this, the more it becomes a firm favourite of mine.

Blimey. Hugely impressive. I’m floored.

Nile – What Should Not Be Unearthed (Review)

Nile are a US Death Metal band and this is their eighth album.

As pretty much anyone into Death Metal knows of Nile by now, they’re a band who need little introduction. Their Egyptian-themed Brutal/Technical Death Metal set them out as special and talented very early on, propelling them to the upper echelons of the Death Metal hierarchy quite quickly.

Nile’s formula for brutality remains intact – whirlwind riffing, driving drums, fast-paced growls, complicated melodies, etc. All of which still doesn’t stop them from being surprisingly catchy and memorable, despite the extremity that they display.

What Should Not Be Unearthed is Nile being as Brutal as they know how to be. This doesn’t necessarily mean complete crazy technicality all the time, as they settle into a nicely simple riff on occasion and just plain hammer the nails into the sarcophagus with it. Having said that of course, the bulk of the material on this album is fast, complex and bewildering in its ferocity and violence.

One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about Nile is their ability to combine head-spinning technicality with esoteric melodies and memorable refrains. This impressive ability is alive and well on these new songs. The Egyptian influences, both in the lyrics and music, are still present and correct too, with tracks like In the Name of Amun in particular sealing that atmosphere in.

As you know, I always love a good solo and there are some blistering ones here. The ultra-musicianship on display on this release is as jaw-dropping as to be expected from a band of this calibre, but they never let this get in the way of a good song.

Although it’s unlikely they will ever top their early albums and the impact that they had on the Death Metal scene, this doesn’t preclude What Should Not Be Unearthed from being a very strong Nile album. It’s always good to hear new Nile stuff, and this new release is a solid 50 minutes of Death Metal.

Hell, that doesn’t do it justice really. Nile have raised the bar so high in the past that while it may be true that compared to their illustrious back catalogue this is ‘merely’ a very good album, when compared to the vast majority of bands out there Nile are still head and shoulders above most of the competition.

It’s Nile. Just go and get it.