Lmst

By Steel Druhm

I’ve said it before. I’m not the biggest fan of tech-death. Sure, some of it can be fun, inspired lunacy, but I prefer my death dumb, ugly, and violent. I don’t need someone twanging away on a fretless bass or shredding a 30-string axe while I get my graveyard gorilla on. Thusly, Kansas-based tech-death luminaries, Origin, always left me somewhat nonplussed. Enter Unmerciful, the brutal death metal project featuring former Origin members, Clinton Appelhanz and Jeremy Turner. Though very talented musicians, these fiends prefer smashing skulls over parading a cosmic fuckton of notes past you while toying with quirky and off-kilter tempos. What you get on their fourth album, Devouring Darkness is a large steel-toed boot up your arse courtesy of a truckload of vicious death giving nods to Suffocation, Hate Eternal, Cannibal Corpse and other beastly friends best kept in crawlspaces. I don’t know what’s in the water in Kansas, but it’s not FDA-approved. Are you ready to get pulpified?

Talk about a proper album opener! Lead track “Miracle in Fire” is a steel pipe with a grenade duct-taped to it, and the beatings commence with lusty gusto. This is blasting, pummeling insanity with a vile OSDM charm served up with the frenzy that only comes from the Monkey Rage Virus. It’s like Cannibal Corpse violently copulating with premo Suffocation and Deicide, with James Murphy ripping off arresting solos between rubs and tugs. The riffs are insane and chaotic, the drumming is oppressive and relentless, and the vocals are disgusting as fook. It’s hell in a handbasket, and I love it to pieces. “Unnatural Feocity” is brainless cavemen ooga booga death played at time-warping velocities, and the Suffocation influence is impossible to miss. The title track introduces a harsh black edge to the death maelstrom. Scathing, twisting riffs swarm in abundance as a strong Morbid Angel stench burns through the oppressive atmosphere, and vocals wander into reverb-drenched Rotpit territory. It runs a bit too long, but delivers a lot of grotesque goods along the way.

“Infernal Conquering” is another highlight, with blasting speed alternating with 6-ton grooves and beef-brained mega-chugs. At their best, Unmerciful offer high-octane insanity fuel for the dangerously deranged. Their unhealthy commitment to speed leads them into a Krisiun-type conundrum where everything bleeds together into a turbo-charged mush. This can make it challenging to discern one song from another at a certain point, though it sure keeps the blood pumping. Another issue is the cover of Origin’s “Vomit You Out.” It arrives mid-album and feels unnecessary, with its grindier approach enough of a departure from the rest of Devouring Darkness to make it stick out and disrupt. Lastly, closer “Vengeance Transcending” is a step down after an album’s worth of quality death metal shenanigans, feeling more generic than its album-mates. At 41 minutes, Devouring Darkness is about as much of this kind of death as you can process before your grey matter begins to break down into pond paste. As it stands, I’m barely hanging on by my ape nails by the time the album wraps. The production is good for the style, with drums forward enough to pulverize kidney stones without drowning out the riffs and vocals. It’s abusive, sure, but why else did you come here?

Talent abounds across the board here, as every member of Unmerciful is accomplished and impressive at what they do. Clinton Appelhanz loads the material down with approximately 500 million riffs, and they twist and corkscrew all over the songs in bizarre and unholy ways. He’s a one-man apocalypse of fretboard abuse and the main reason the songs work as well as they do. He’s got little bits of Trey Azagthoth, James Murphy, and Terrance Hobbs in his style, and he goes for the throat 100% of the time. Trynt Kelly’s kit-work is stupifyingly fast, savage, and convoluted, and it’s hard to miss all the chaos he causes in the backline. Through all the commotion, Josh Riley roars and croaks with reliably inhuman vocal cords, sounding like an unstoppable monstrosity from the primordial ooze. That’s a good thing.

Devouring Darkness is an unceasing beatdown of a death metal album where technicality takes a backseat to brutality. The chops are put in service of the songs and not the other way around, and that results in some entertaining ear fuckery. Unmerciful aren’t reinventing the steel here, but they are melting it down with their unrestrained savagery. There’s always a place for that kind of animalistic behavior in the Zoo House ov Steel. If you like your death fast, ugly, and brutish, you should make room for it, too. It will keep the missionaries and bill collectors away (along with everyone else). No mercy!

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Willowtip
Websites: unmerciful.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/officialunmerciful | instagram.com/official_unmerciful
Releases Worldwide: May 23rd, 2025

#30 #AmericanMetal #CannibalCorpse #DeathMetal #Deicide #DevouringDarkness #HateEternal #Krisiun #May25 #MorbidAngel #Origin #Review #Reviews #Suffocation #Unmerciful #WillowtipRecords

Lowen – Do Not Go to War with the Demons of Mazandaran [Things You Might Have Missed 2024]

By Kenstrosity

My biggest regret of 2024 when it comes to my metallic ingestions is missing Lowen’s incredible sophomore effort, Do Not Go to War with the Demons of Mazandaran. You may ask why I went so long without giving it a go, but if you look at its early October release date and the general state of life in my region at that time, you’ll understand. In another timeline, I would have spun Demons until it fell to dust in my hands, handily securing it a Top Five slot on my Top Ten(ish) of the year. It’s just that good.

This is my first time with Lowen, so I can’t speak to how Demons compares to their debut. But I can say one thing for certain: doom rarely feels as massive as this. Boasting a nasty guitar tone that I’d sooner expect from bands like Temple of Void or Hate Eternal, swaggering rhythms, mystical storytelling, and the omnipotent power pipes of lead vocalist Nina Saeidi, Lowen’s second tome commands my undivided attention. Supplemented by multilingual passages, tasteful strings supplied by guest cellist Arianna Mahsayeh, and a cavalcade of ten-ton riffs courtesy of lead guitarist Shem Lucas, Demons shines as an unqualified triumph the likes of which I’ve not heard since Fvneral Fvkk’s Carnal Confessions.

With Demons, Lowen’s singular songwriting and unique voice becomes the focus of their mission, and therein lies their greatest strength. Razor sharp hooks and multitudinous forking paths weave intricately between each and every one of Demons’ six acts, forming a richly detailed and deeply fascinating tapestry which evokes in equal measure an awestruck reverence and a debilitating sense of dread. In turn, listening to Demons equates to witnessing a cataclysmic armageddon so blinding in its terrible beauty as to hypnotize every synapse, siphoning my spirit and betrothing it unconditionally to Lowen. Devastating.

Lowen’s inspired performances imbue that otherworldly magic which propels Demons’ ascension to godhood. Nina plays no small part in this. Piercing through all defenses from the first note of “Corruption on Earth” and razing all before her with the brassy clarity of her siren call, Nina proves her absolute mastery of the vocal instrument (“Waging War Against God,” “The Seed that Dreamed of its Own Creation”). Shem’s ever-shifting, jagged riffs routinely challenge the boundary between doom metal and death metal, providing a palpable sense of danger to the affair (“Corruption on Earth,” “May Your Ghost Drink Pure Water”). Session drummer Cal Constantine grounds and pounds in concert with Shem’s destructive guitars, relentlessly pummeling the pocket at every opportunity and maximizing impact with every passing minute (“Najang Bah Divhayeh Mazandaran,” “Ghazal for the Embrace of Fire”). Arianna’s delicate cello may not feature often, but when it does you take notice of its unique beauty, proffering a lulling contrast to the sheer heft of Demons’ core sound (“May Your Ghost Drink Pure Water”).

By all accounts, I should not have missed Lowen’s Do Not Go to War with the Demons of Mazandaran. It feels criminal to have left it out of rotation for so long.1 Shame floods my heart and regret saturates my mind. For now that I’ve experienced Demons in all its glory, I can only wonder with great incredulity how Lowen follow this up. One thing’s for sure, I’ll be waiting for it with bated breath.

Tracks to Check Out: “Corruption on Earth,” “Najang Bah Divhayeh Mazandaran” “Waging War Against God,” “May Your Ghost Drink Pure Water”

#2024 #DoNotGoToWarWithTheDemonsOfMazandaran #DoomMetal #FvneralFvkk #HateEternal #Lowen #ProgressiveMetal #Review #Reviews #TempleOfVoid #ThingsYouMightHaveMissed #ThingsYouMightHaveMissed2024 #UKMetal

Mercyless – Those Who Reign Below Review

By Steel Druhm

The tale of France’s Mercyless has been told before on these pages so I don’t want to recount the saga of their rise, fall from grace, and eventual redemption. I will however endlessly blather on about how great their early releases are. 1992s Abject Offerings was a top-notch example of furious thrashing death metal with chops to spare. However, it was 93s Coloured Funeral that cemented their legacy, taking their brutish bashing and smartly seasoning it with the progressive energy of mid-period Death. It’s technical and intelligent, full of twists and turns, but the war hammer is ever-present. It’s a deeply underappreciated classic that deserves far more attention. Since reforming in 2011, Mercyless have released 3 albums of good to very good old school death, no longer pushing boundaries and content to rehash the glories of the early 90s. 2020’s The Mother of All Plagues was an entirely solid if not exceptional blast of familiar deathery, harkening back to the stuff I harassed dormmates with in my drunken college years. 2024 sees them return with 8th full-length Those Who Reign Below, and Mercyless remain locked in their late-career comfort zone, delivering 90s-centric thrashing death in the vein of old Pestilence and Morbid Angel. Can these olde dawgs still bring the war to your front door?

At this point in their resurgence, Mercyless are a known quantity. You get meat n’ taters death with heaping helpings of thrashing fury and enough technical know-how to make things interesting. There’s nothing new to what Mercyless are doing here, but they know how to clobber and cudgel nonetheless. Opener “Extreme Unction” is the nastiest filth on offer and it hits like a concrete truck flying down a steep hill. The riff phrasing bears the stench of vintage Morbid Angel and original vocalist/guitarist Max Otero has a death croak rather similar to that of David Vincent. The speed and savagery are spot on and the guitar work is very good. This is Merycless at their best and they can still kill it. While the quality of songcraft doesn’t remain at this elevated level, you still get crop-dusted by burly thrashers like “I Am Hell” where bits of Vader slam into Behemoth and Angel Corpse. Both “Thy Resplendent Inferno” and “Prelude to Eternal Darkness” check all the 90s death thrash boxes, being invigorating if not gobsmacking nuggets of fugly noise.

There are a few cuts that underperform too. “Phantoms of Cain” is generic in structure and leaves me unfulfilled despite reminding me of a basket of death deplorables I loved back in the day. The inclusion of a 2-minute instrumental and a dull outro pads out the runtime without enhancing the listening experience, and closer “Sanctus Deus Mortis” weaves early days Death influences throughout, but it doesn’t have much of a payoff. At a trim 42-plus minute with most songs in the 3-4 minute window, Those Who Reign Below moves at a brisk pace and rarely drags. It just doesn’t soar often enough.

Max Otero and Gautier Merklen are very skilled six-string assassins and the riffage is consistently solid throughout. The solos are varied and slick and the duo borrows from all the best legendary acts as they burn and loot the countryside. I especially like it when they venture into Azagthothian slitherscapes, which is common here. I’ve been a fan of Otero’s vocals since the beginning and they’re still good and grisly today. Johann Voirin (Mortuary) tags in to man the kit and does a great job skinning the skins and scraping the brain wax from your ears with a thunderous performance. I often found myself more focused on what he was doing than everything else, which is unusual for me.

Mercyless will never recapture the elusive magic heard on Coloured Funeral but I’m more than happy to see them churning out albums of the caliber. Those Who Reign Below won’t top many best-of lists this year but it’s a competent, effective death metal biscuit with enough frills and chills in the meat gravy to hold its place in the rotation for a while. Well worth a brutal spin.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Osmose Productions | Bandcamp 1
Websites: mercyless.bandcamp.com 2 | facebook.com/mercylesscult | instagram.com/mercylessofficial
Releases Worldwide: October 25th, 2024

Dolphyless

Mercyless is far from a household name, as are many from the short-lived French death/thrash scene.3 But the olde and wise like legendary AMG alum Al Kikuras heard their fabled Coloured Funeral back in the days of wound magnetic tape and FM radio as a major discovery tool. Yes, it’s true the 90s weren’t kind to acts of all varieties, with Mercyless too succumbing to the pressures of groove and hiatus. Yet with their revitalization in the modern age, the French underground stalwart has managed to both impress and remain solid in their golden years. In a back-to-basics move, Those Who Reign Below serves as both an ode to the lords of the underworld and an outing of classic death metal from a time when genre lines were but a suggestion.

Sharing fresh blood with Mortuary—another aged French act revitalized in this modern era—this current version of Mercyless continues to tackle death metal with a thrash-rooted flair alongside ears who grew up with Mercyless’ contemporaries. More so than their original run (really their first two albums), Mercyless has picked up some of the low-end grooves you’d hear in late 90s Morbid Angel (“Crown of Blasphemy,” “Sanctus Deus Mortis”) along with a jagged melodicism that fed into increased aggression of early Hate Eternal works (“Phantoms of Cain”). But as a band born of a certain time, it’s hard to escape that early Celtic Frost influenced death/thrash that powered primal Florida bruisers Master or Obituary, with heavy skanks and ragged vocals leading the charge (“I Am Hell,” “Prelude to Eternal Darkness”). And still, that same gritty sense of harmony that composed Mercyless’ career highlights presents itself through founder Max Otero’s chunky guitar charms (“Thy Resplendent Inferno,” “Chaos Requiem”).

While a falling out of interest with deathly happenings drove Mercyless into hibernation all those years ago, Otero and co. have no lost love, at this stage, for ugly tones that carve monster riffs. With dialed incision whammy dives, tracks that rip from the start (“I Am Hell”), or find a fluttering catch in wild solo land (“Evil Shall…,” “Crown of Blasphemy”), have no problem rolling back eyes and flaring nostrils for a fully-torqued pit frenzy. A fuzzy twang provides weight to each riff embarkment, allowing techier expeditions (“Extreme Unction,” “Phantoms…”) to land with a precision that plays off the force of drummer Johann Voirin’s textbook accelerating kicks and pounding snare drive. On the low-end bassist Yann Tligui doesn’t provide the same depth of performance that popped about in the distant past, but his gravely throb provides a grit necessary to ensure that Mercyless wrecks bodies in a circular, tumbling fashion.

However, Mercyless’ increased theater around anti-Christian themes hinders Those Who Reign Below’s more direct offerings. Though Mercyless has never shied away from elements that spit at Christianity, their renaissance from 2013’s Unholy Black Splendor has increased its upfront presence. And, likewise, Those Who Reign Below finds itself the holder of both a built in liturgical intro (the first section of “Extreme Unction”) and an unannounced—but still present—closing modulated sermon (“Zecheriah 31”) to reinforce its ham-fisted camp. This book-ending also creates an awkward framing around the true closer, “Sanctus Deus Mortis,” which runs preceded by a low-in-tension instrumental (“Absurd Theater”). These blunders, though, don’t tack much time onto the total run of forty-two minutes, so they are forgivable. But those looking for a steady blaze from snout to tail may encounter more of an ending fizzle than desired.

Regardless, Mercyless harbors too high a quality of hammering riff, slobbering shout death metal in its unlikely second-coming—a length of time that now spans as many albums and almost as many years as the first. In many ways, this new path of old sounds represents a more fitting distillation of Mercyless’ evil worshipping ambitions than its detour into weird 90s industrial death land.4 For those easily moistened by the call of a sweat-stewed pit, Those Who Reign Below offers a practiced and visceral window into an aged like fine jerky take on rippin’ death/thrash. So give it a listen and be sure to hit the classics too—Abject Offerings and Coloured Funeral—if you’re new to Mercyless’ ancient callings.

Rating: 3.0/5.0

#2024 #30 #CelticFrost #ColouredFuneral #DeathMetal #DeathThrash #FrenchMetal #HateEternal #Loudblast #Massacra #Master #Mercyless #MorbidAngel #Mortuary #Obituary #Oct24 #OsmoseProductions #Pestilence #Review #Reviews #TheMotherOfAllPlagues #ThoseWhoReignBelow

Cannibal Corpse/Hate Eternal’s Erik Rutan loses 90% of belongings in devastating Florida hurricanes:

#CannibalCorpse #HateEternal #ErikRutan #HurricaneHelene #HurricaneMilton #HurricaneDamage

https://metalinsider.net/news/cannibal-corpse-hate-eternals-erik-rutan-loses-90-of-belongings-in-devastating-florida-hurricanes

#TheMetalDogArticleList #MetalInjection Eight Old-School Death Metal Bands That Need To Release A New Record Demilich? Dismember? Grave? We need 'em. metalinjection.net/lists/eight-... #Demilich #Dismember #Grave #HateEternal #Martyr #DeadCongregation #Gorguts #Atheist

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#MetalInjection
Eight Old-School Death Metal Bands That Need To Release A New Record
Demilich? Dismember? Grave? We need 'em.

https://metalinjection.net/lists/eight-old-school-death-metal-bands-that-need-to-release-a-new-record

#Demilich #Dismember #Grave #HateEternal #Martyr #DeadCongregation #Gorguts #Atheist

Construct of Lethe – A Kindness Dealt in Venom Review

By Dear Hollow

Construct of Lethe embodies a constant limbo of underrating, often in cahoots with acts like Desolate Shrine or Lantern in that they lay delicate fingers upon dissonance and grime without diving headlong into them, oft sporting a blackened edge. Instead of buying into mimicry, Tony Petrocelly’s quartet Construct of Lethe has embodied a darkness all of their own, beginning with 2016’s Corpsegod, a raw and angular take on death metal, and perfected in 2018’s more triumphant Exiler, which was given the TYMHM treatment by the gone-but-unforgotten Kronos. First album in six years, A Kindness Dealt in Venom attempts to break their silence with an ambitious album designed as one continuous track with twelve distinct movements.

Construct of Lethe merely dabbles in dissonance and grime, but that doesn’t mean A Kindness Dealt in Venom is an easy or pleasant listen. Rather, there is a veil draped across its entire visage, ghostly and punishing in equal measure. Uncompromisingly bleak and haunting, it is an album you get lost in, and one you can be proud to blare at maximum volume, a challenger for fans of classic Morbid Angel, Immolation, or Hate Eternal, and for diehards of the more dissonant stylings of Noctambulist or Heaving Earth alike. Divisively more experimental and far more contemplative and divisive than its predecessors in a more pronounced doom presence and instrumental saturation, A Kindness Dealt in Venom nonetheless offers no reprieve.

Construct of Lethe first and foremost attacks their third full-length with a sense of menacing organicity and miasmic fluidity – with complete shredding in mind. You have your more predictable death metal affairs, touched upon by blastbeats and chunky riffs a la Morbid Angel or Bolt Thrower, in tracks like opening movement “Artifice” or “Denial in Abstraction,” but the true highlights are feats of songwriting that revel in a more slow-moving and ominous pace, as the dissonant jangling saturating “Contempt” and the pulsing tribal elements of “I Am the Lionkiller” inject palpable dread. Longest track “Bete Noir” is an easy climax, its nine-minute breath oozing through pulsing death/doom beatdowns of raucous percussion, thick bass, and a dynamic with disintegration in mind. Eating at the ears like a more insidious but deadlier pyroclastic flow, the percussion acts like the hammering of the anvil while the sliding interchange between Morbid Angel riffs and Immolation blasphemy in the soundtrack of madness. “Labyrinthine Terror” and closer “Tension – There is Nothing for You Here” exemplify this lethal fusion likewise, recalling more high-minded assaults like Labyrinth of Stars or Sulphur Aeon. Construct of Lethe expertly balances a dissonant death template with old school death shredding in an album that mightily succeeds in both.

Truthfully, there are no blatantly bad tracks aboard A Kindness Dealt in Venom, but the implications of its pacing and flow are questionable at best. Construct of Lethe’s first act up until “Denial in Abstraction” will have you believe that this is a pure death metal foray (like Corpsegod or Exiler) but when the second act begins you are unwittingly met with a series of build-ups with little capitalization. Tracks “Flickering,” “I Am the Lionkiller,” “Paroxysm as Pratmatism,” “Raw Nerve, Iron Will,” “Sacrosanct,” and “Tension – There is Nothing For You Here” are all instrumentals stacked in the latter half,1 and are likewise all incredibly brief affairs, the shortest “Sacrosanct” clocking in at less than a minute. I understand that Construct of Lethe composed this album as a single track with twelve movements, but this whiplash from instrumental to instrumental, with incredible dynamic builds leading to musical dead-ends, is a head-scratcher. It’s as if they included new vocalist Kishor Haulenbeek in the first half of the album then abruptly fired him before the second – even though the guy’s still employed. The flow is therefore problematic, as the first half of the album constitutes thirty minutes of the album’s forty-five. As “Bete Noir” stands as a potential SOTY, it puts all following tracks in its shadow – which sucks, because there are ten.

Construct of Lethe proves they are masters of their craft with A Kindness Dealt in Venom, but it’s almost entirely derailed by its odd tracklist. Especially when Petrocelly and company have never included an instrumental in Exiler or Corpsegod, it’s confusing why suddenly A Kindness Dealt in Venom features six of them – primarily in the second half. Don’t get me wrong, each track is fantastic, blending purist death metal with dissonant and avant-garde tendencies that never derail it due to organic production and songwriting. However, for an album that professes a cohesive whole, Construct of Lethe has never felt more disjointed. Bang your head while scratching it.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records
Websites: constructoflethe.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/constructoflethe
Releases Worldwide: June 21st, 2024

#2024 #30 #AKindnessDealtInVenom #AmericanMetal #AtmosphericDeathMetal #BoltThrower #ConstructOfLethe #DeathMetal #DesolateShrine #DissonantDeathMetal #HateEternal #HeavingEarth #Immolation #Jun24 #LabyrinthOfStars #Lantern #MorbidAngel #Noctambulist #OldSchoolDeathMetal #Review #Reviews #SulphurAeon #TranscendingObscurityRecords

Drowned – Procul His Review

By Dear Hollow

Whether they like it or not, Sulphur Aeon left its mark on the death metal world. While it’s easy to focus on their lyrical themes and reverence for the Great Old Ones as a lyrical monument, their straightforward approach tinged with blackened precision and colossal atmosphere extends to more than the Cthulhu worshipers out there. Take their fellow Germans, the longstanding death metal act Drowned. While the lyrics of Procul His revolve around things like the occult, darkness, and abstract themes, you’ll find that the sound feels straight outta the Antisphere. Death metal’s barbarity is channeled through the discreet and sinister palette of darkness, and the atmosphere is front and center.

Contrary to the epic overwhelm of Devenial Verdict or the smoke-filled opaqueness of Desolate Shrine, Berlin trio Drowned dwells in minimalist compositions. While vocalist and bassist Greg Circum offers a weighty roar that drips in blackened menace and drummer Tobias Engl’s technique is rock-solid, the crawling subdued riffs and patient plucking of former Necros Christos guitarist Tlmnn are the real star of the show. The trio’s second full-length is undeniably evocative, a mysterious and ominous sermon tinged with malice, although the brutality remains absent and replay value is sparse. It’s worth a spin for the fans of the more contemplative side of death metal but offers little else.

What Drowned does well is concoct its tracks with patience, and even the more vicious cuts are steeped in mystery. Openers “Star Tower” and “Phantom Stairs” are squirming dirges of semi-dissonant leads and simple drumming, while brutal death growls dominate the palette. “Corpse God” features a pendulum swing of a 6/8 timing, which injects a distinct madness to the proceedings, while the synth adds a dark twist to “Seed of Bones.” More energetic cuts abound in the second act, as “Malachite Mirror,” “Man in Devil in Man,” and “Blue Moth Vault” offer influences of blackened death and blastbeats, respectively, with blazing tremolo lighting the way through dark and gloomy soundscapes. Minimalism nevertheless remains a stalwart in these heavier interpretations even so, as bass remains nearly inaudible underneath the guitar-centric approach and Circum’s vicious vocals. Drowned toes the line between blackened death and old-school philosophies, most effectively culminating in the riffiest cut “Chryseos Vas,” which effectively exchanges deathy chugs for blackened intensity and back again, with a charisma found in doom’s mammoth halls while its more patient crescendos are achieved in climactic crusty passages.

The primary issue with Procul His is that Drowned fails to claim any sense of memorability throughout the album’s protracted 44-minute length. It’s a gloomy affair, mastery of dark melody on full display in ways that recall Sulphur Aeon’s latest, but lacking the colossal quality and fully immersive experience that makes the Lovecraftian songstresses so effective. Thus, no riff sticks in the brain, with potentially unhinged brutality a la Vitriol or Hate Eternal tidily confined to the safety of its atmospheric compositions. Opener “Star Tower,” while creepy-crawly, is remarkably limp in its painfully sparse melodies and simple lack of things going on. Drowned’s energetic back-half blurs together due to jarring passage shifts between riffs and plucking and punky passages with little apt transition between it all, with “Man in Devil in Man,” “Blue Moth Vault,” and “Seed of Bones” being just a kinda pleasant blur from start to end. That’s the problem with Procul His: there’s very little explicitly bad about it, but there’s nothing that stands out either.

The first half, despite the limp opener, had me hoping to hang my antlers once again upon the Three Tree with Drowned’s effectiveness in conjuring a dread-inducing and nightmarishly vivid atmosphere through minimalist tools. While I initially thought “Man in Devil in Man” was a welcome jolt of energy, it instead signaled a wave of uninspired death metal from an act that could do so much better. While it ends on a good note that balances its effective assets, it does not conclude an effective album. The balance between menacing atmosphere and devastating death metal is an admirable attempt, but too often it becomes a balance of too little and too much across its two halves. Drowned features an enticing aura of madness and mystery, but in a way that “We have Sulphur Aeon at home” does.

Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Sepulchral Voice Records
Websites: drowned.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/drowned.death.metal
Releases Worldwide: January 26th, 2024

#20 #2024 #AtmosphericDeathMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #DeathMetal #DesolateShrine #DevenialVerdict #Drowned #GermanMetal #HateEternal #Jan24 #ProculHis #Review #Reviews #SepulchralVoiceRecords #SulphurAeon #Vitriol

Vitriol – Suffer & Become Review

By Holdeneye

When our resident death metal professor, Ferrous Beuller, covered To Bathe from the Throat of Cowardice, the debut full-length from Portland’s Vitriol, he was struck by the sheer heaviness that dominated the record. And while he noted the enormous potential displayed by the band, he bemoaned the lack of balancing contrast, a lack that prevented the monstrous material from making the intended impact. Now, I like To Bathe… a lot more than Ferrous did, but as a fellow contrast-lover, I have to agree with his general assessment. And so, apparently, does the band. In the promo materials for follow-up Suffer & Become, vocalist and guitarist Kyle Rasmussen states ‘I wanted to have an album that had a stark duality to it. Very high highs and very low lows. I wanted the album to convey a sense of optimism that probably gets lost in the black maelstrom that is the first album.’ With this in mind, I pressed play on Suffer & Become, wondering if this new approach would still live up to the band’s name.

Boy, does it ever. Suffer & Become takes just about everything about To Bathe… and improves upon it ten-fold. Vitriol still carries a base sound defined by the Floridian über-heaviness of Hate Eternal, with bits of the bombastic blackened brutality of Behemoth, the crippling clinicality of Cryptopsy, and the acidic, anguished absurdity of Anaal Nathrakh, but this time around, the compositions (and production) allow for a bit more breathing room—and the album benefits greatly because of it. Embedded single “Weaponized Loss” is perhaps the best example of what Vitriol is offering this time around, with all of the aforementioned influences swirling together in the event horizon of the band’s immense heaviness.

From the opening notes of first track “Shame and Its Afterbirth,” it’s clear that Vitriol have embraced the need for a more varied approach for their auditory assault. A creepy, downcast intro paves the way, allowing the following onslaught to hit that much harder. Most of the rest of the track is relentlessly fast, but it contains a surprising amount of melody with some incredible guitar work. Next comes “The Flowers of Sadism,” a tune that begins with a much slower, groovier approach by employing some touches of the band’s deathcore roots. But the mid-track instrumental “Survival’s Careening Inertia” provides the most exquisite use of contrast on the record. The song begins beautiful and clean, and even when it ups the pace, there’s a triumphant tone to the music. But all of that changes around the two-minute mark when things take a turn for the darker, ending in a symphonic bludgeoning that would make Fleshgod Apocalypse jealous. New drummer Matt Kilner (Nithing) puts on an absolute clinic on the track, and it highlights just how much he brings to the table.

Suffer & Become is one of those rare records that works just as well when taken in as a surface-level cacophony as it does when judiciously consumed with attention to detail. Vitriol’s sound is overwhelming in the best way imaginable, and it’s incredibly satisfying to just lay back and absorb the beatdown. But if you want to put your headphones on and mine the nooks and crannies of these songs, you could probably listen to the album once a day for the next several months and still walk away with appreciation for some newly discovered lick, fill, vocal, or songwriting element. Co-vocalists Rasmussen and Adam Roethlisberger (who also gives an incredible performance on bass) are absolute monsters, and the virtuosity displayed by the band, not to mention the sonic palette, reminds me of another technically proficient Pacific Northwest band that I know and love: Aethereus. I’d list standout tracks for you, but quite honestly, each and every track here has something that makes it a highlight, and the whole package will yield far greater enjoyment when taken in as whole.

Rasmussen describes Suffer & Become as a ‘Jungian Dante’s Inferno,’ the product of a period of intense personal introspection for him—and the integration that occurred as a result. As such, the record shows that Vitriol, the band, has undergone the same transformation; the pure rage, born of suffering, expressed on the band’s debut has been metabolized, emerging with a healthy dose of perspective and nuance. And thanks to this contrast, Vitriol’s sound has become something altogether more powerful—and heavy—in the process.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 128 kbps mp3
Label: Century Media Records
Websites: vitriolwarfare.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/vitriolwarfare
Releases Worldwide: January 26th, 2024

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