Category Archives: Death Metal

MAXIMUM PERVERSION (aus): “Fuck Ya Ears and Drink Ya Beers” split Cd with EBOLIE (aus) 2008 Grindhead

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ghr18.jpgNew round from Australia’s premiere grindcore label Grindhead. Damn these guys are as prolific as rabbits.

Once more we have a split recording between two Australian bands. The first one, Maximum Perversion sound new to me, but I cannot swear I never heard them before, my memory is losing track lately. Might be, because I haven’t found anything particularly memorable on their side. This stuff is quite Ok I guess, I mean, neato Death Metal with double vocals a la Exhumed/Macabre and some grinding/crust vibe, but they never blast out to frightening levels, and this mid tempo groovy chords are definitely not bad, but far from raising wet headbanging desires either. The Aussies have good taste with riffs for sure, that must be genetic somehow, yet sometimes thing don’t click even when every thing’s in the right place.

The recording is of my personal taste, chaotic but balanced well enough to distinguish every single move. There is one really good song in the end, called “Wizardgrind” go for it if you need some recommendations.

NECROS CHRISTOS (Ger): “Triune Impurity Rites” Cd 2006 Sepulchral Voice

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Necros ChristosWhen I hear albums like this one, I really find it arduos to connnect. I have difficulties choosing where to start, coordinating my fiongers, trying to come up with the right words, becouse 99% of my brain just wants to sit back and listen, being dragged within the wounds of christ to drink and bathe of his pain. The room where I am typing was cold, but even colder – unnaturally so – is the miasma of Death that now fills it. Absence of life. Decomposing life. Pure necromantic spells that drain warmth and happiness.

Well first off I’d like to say that “Sepulchral Voice” is my favorite Sodom song ever – the choice of using it as a label name is brilliant (well, we’re on the lines of Deathlike Silence but when we talk about songs like those, we cannot criticize) – not much but that’s the most clever thing I can think of as of now. Do you have the idea of how fucking good this is? Seriously speaking, this music is Evil with capital “E”. I’d like to hear what politicians and religious people that found the Devil’s speech in albums by the doors or led zeppelin albums would think of something as dark as this. There is surely a lot of Celtic Frost hovering among the tracks, and a tidbit of earliest Mortuary Drape‘s theatrical evocativeness – but most of all, there is class, the class of a deranged painter covered in sperm, dried blood and drool drawing the lines of his own insanity with the colors of fucking hell. In every field real artists know how to weave a masterpiece with just a few strokes, and this album reflects this concept on music. You don’t have overly complicated guitar riffs. Actually most of them are quite simple yet arranged with such a taste and elegance that everything flows like black blood running smoothly from an altar of sacrifice* – simple fragments of dedication to the cult of evil arranged with meticolous taste. I love the vocals – the last time I heard ones so malignant was in Immolation‘s “Dawn of Possession”, but they’re just the right complement to a balanced macabre ballet of death and putrefaction. Ave to the lord of Flies, Asmodeus rex.

*Curse of the damned / Confronting the evil you dread / Coalesce into one your shadow and soul / Soon you will meet the undead

DESECRATION (eng): “Process of Decay” Lp Cd 2007 Copro/Epitomite

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Desecration - Process of DecayThis album by Englishmen Desecration has the big flaw of starting out with a few seconds of bare drum beats without any backing string instruments. I consider this a flaw becouse the sound of the drums on this album is really atrocious, worthy of the worse Vomit Remnants or Infected Malignity. That said, one has to clarify that the music itself is oddly totally different from what one could expect from the drum sound, as we don’t have routine “cold” star and stripes Brutal Death Metal like the Japanese do. Desecration play a good mxcture of Death and a touch of Grind with raw guitar sound and growling vocals. Ollie’s vocals are excellent and possibly the best thing in the album : ogre-deep at times, at others phlegmy and disgusting or even piglike. The riffs themselves are not always top notch, the mid tempo power chords placed at regular intervals in every song are a bit too “aggro” “Machine Head” for my delicate tastes, but in general I have managed to appreciate the album from start to finish – there is also a good share of relentless accelerations and incomprehensible grunts which generally raise the heaviness of the work.  I don’t remember much of the previous albums but I remember I liked the 7″ quite a bit – I cannot really trace any parallel right now. All I want to stress is that I would really appreciate if they cut away all this terrible stop and go palm muting stuff, it’s really unnecessary.  

The idea of writing an album on the concept of a decomposing body reminds me of The Todeskings (the cult Buttgereit movie dedicated to Death and decomposition), and reading the singer Ollie has some professional first hand experience on the file of dead bodies, I assume the lyrics could have been an interesting read. We don’t often read true English people writing lyrics. Pity.

The cover art and layout are also quite appalling, garish and plain, with wrongly placed graphic elemnts, terrible cheap photoshop effects, and grossly depixelated pictures. Epitomite should consider changing graphic artist.

INTERMENT (swe): “Conjuration of the Sepulchral” split Cd with FUNEBRARUM (USA-Nj) 2007 Conqueror of Thorns

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Funebrarum IntermentFuck, the Swedish guitar sound a la Entombed/Carnage always makes me cum like Peter North on acid. Interment is a band that really sound like it was taken straight from 1990. It is great to hear that they did not lose the touch despite the passage of time, a lot (almost all) of the bands that were formed the same year as Interment completely lost “it” by the mid nineties. Maybe they just fell into hybernation and they still think we’re in the year 1990 ah ah! Guess what a surprise when they receive letters without flyers and find out that Entombed plays commercial shit and Matti Karki has turned fat again.

The sound, the rhytm, the general writing and even the lyrics are all taken straight from the golden age of Death Metal, and I do not mean Interment sounds like a relatively recent band with a vintage sound (take Deathevokation of Pentacle) – it is a band really sound exactly like a band from that period. I even found some traces of early Napalm Death sonorities, Autopsy and other trhash/grind acts from the 80’s in the mix, and these are influences that modern band trying to play vintage just don’t have, period. The vocals are not terribly deep (also in typical Swedish way), and for once you will be able to discern the phrasing without reading the booklet. But the killer part in this release is the guitarwork which is HUGE, with all those vaguely harmonic riffs a la late Nihilist or Dismember, grossly fat sound and all the headbanging rage of lost centuries (now tell me “Breeding Spawn” is not a Carnage song).

Madame et Monsieurs, another release not to be missed.  Killer Death Metal lyrics as well, totally flawless. 

FUNEBRARUM (USA-Nj): “Conjuration of the Sepulchral” split Cd with INTERMENT (swe) 2007 Conqueror of Thorns

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Funebrarum IntermentSo Funebrarum is finally back after the brilliant full length “Beneath the Columns of Abandoned Gods” released 6 years ago and the deluxe gatefuld 7″ “Dormant Hallucinations” which I sadly skipped (for a serie of reasons I won’t go through right now). It has to e pointed out how this band actually preceded a few years the recent “old school” gimmick of the last 2-3 years, as it was really the first release to completely and courageously tribute the old Finnish/Swedish scene on an album that is close to perfection.

Releasing these two new songs as a split with Interment is surely a fitting choice as the band is still obsessed with the glorious and majestic sound of early nineties Finnish/Swedish Death Metal (which is my favourite genre ever as well by the way). Everything on these few minutes is still sweating old school grime, crusts and mold, and is as dark as the deepest zombie hole – and the sound is now, if possible, even slower and crunchier than before, resulting in a sticky web of sonorities that almost seem as if the tracks were recorded at 45rpm and played at 33. Like said before, there are only two new tracks in the album, considering one of the other 3 is an intro and the two remaining Abhorrence and Grave covers. I would use the same words that I used when I described their previous album but actually something has changed in the Funebrarum sound, and it’s that they have become much darker and heavier since the last time. The vocals are now very, very deep and the sound really fat and clogged by bass frequencies. I really love the new sound even if the riffs, by the contrary, seem a little bit less sicker and twisted.

 The cover art is still done by the most supreme of the vintage artists Chris Moyen, even though there is a sligth blue/violet filter over it which seems quite odd – I’d have preferred pure black and white a release like this. But anyway this is meant to be a “nocturnal” release so I’ll go for the dark night shades. All the influences by bands like Abhorrence, Funebre, Purtenance etc are still huge here, so if you want good shit one must really check this out.

VV.AA. (n/a): “Reincremation” split Cd-r 2007 Nihilistic Holocaust

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ReincremationNew round from Nihilistic Holocaust, afterthe superb three way wit Hateful, Impureza and Hellspawn. France might have second rate football teams, cheese and wine compared to Italy (eh eh) but surely has a generally better grind and death metal scene – from bands to zines to labels. I have deep respect for this guy Gabriel from Nihilistic Holocaust becouse you can really feel his enthusiasm and deication, he does a superlative zine and fuck, his label is also doing high quality – no nonsense releases.

That said, I am a bit disappointed by these new Impureza tracks. The band has undergone a really heavy stylistical turn since the previous songs I remember. The songs are now sung in Spanish (?) and have even a load of flamenco (!) intermezzos in the middle, plus several structural references to latin music which, while executed in a flawless manner, I really found a bit too much for my narrow tastes. I have listened to these tracks more than once but cannot really get into them. Might be becouse I really find all latin music boring and unnerving and I also don’t really like the language too. If you separate the bollocks, the band still has the full force crunch it had in the past, but I am more into Morbid Angel than Atheist if you know what I mean. Political 6 – just for the spirit. Superior musicianship and excellent recording make these tracks quite interesting. The third track is a real blast though – have a listen.

“Full Metal Jacket” has been inflated a bit for intros but is always fun to hear. It’s a good introduction to Sweden’s Arsonist, whose name made me run for cover in fear of hearing some emo haircut sissies playing the Dillinger Escape Plan clones. No shit, Arsonist instead play pure Death Metal the Nihilistic Holocaust way (it’s becoming a mark of quality) – this means no aimless baggy pant brutal chugging, but just pure Death Metal killer riffs, powerful vocals and a good balance  of solos. Some riffs remind me of old Cannibal Corpse but this really do not end here – staying in Swedish ground one might even collect moments of Genocrush Ferox, Strangulation and Immersed in Blood. The bass guitar has a massive sound but it just wraps the tracks in a distinctive sick low saturate vibe instead of just popping out in the middle like in Primus. Arsonist is good stuff, brutal in an old fashioned way without sounding retro. Brutal riffs, deep growls and power riffs abound, neat shit indeed. I would shoot a full 8.

Sudden Death have among the worse song titles in the world in this split (I”nsert Coin”?? “Broken Wings”??) but compared to Arsonist they’re somewhat faster, even if characterized by a gently rougher – almost garageish recording. While powerful and fast, I am not convinced 100% by the vocals but that does not mean they’re not good, just not competely deep as the previous bands so they just might sound a bit odd in the 4 way. The riffs are not amazing either, even if the songs are carefully balanced in terms of power chords and hyperblasting. The slower to mid-tempo parts – that have historically made Italy the worse country in the world in this field of Thrash/Death – are here too not overly catchy, so the songs just seem a bit flat even tough we’re on good levels in general. I’d drop the mid tempos and cure the faster parts more, or a potentially good band like this risks to end like Obscenity or Pavor in the limbo of routine German Death Metal… 7 nonetheless.

I haven’t heard the full length from Ingurgitating Oblivion but I remember this band was good, just did not remember HOW good it was. This is just the kind of pure 100% Florida Death Metal with the right share of demoniac vibrations and hyperbrutal sound. Darkness and fury unleashed. I could compare this band to our Hour of Penance, they’re really fucking killer. It’s been a while since I haven’t heard good shit like this. I could cite Serpents Aeon, Pessimist, Diabolic to give a rough idea of what kind of muzak we’re talking about – really impressive shit. 9,00 in my book.

I have really appreciated Gabriel’s personal creation on the cover of this Cd, much better than the old one. I just am not sure if this split is on Cd-r or if it’s just the promo copies that have been home burned. But I’d go for the first since my one is hand numbered (#143 of?). To sum it up – I wish there were more compilations like this…

NECROS CHRISTOS (Ger): “Grave Damnation” compilation Cd 2005 Worship Him

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Necros Christos - Grave DamnationNecros Christos from Berlin. A phenomenon that has exploded like a burst of flames straight from Hell taking everyone by surprise, cabonizing churches and immolation priests praying for salvation. The whole underground is buzzing and murmuring on how fucking great this band is. And, well, I could not but agree with the mainstream this time. Necros Christos is really the best Death Metal band coming out of the underground in the last few years – it incarnates perfectly every parameter that makes Death Metal the sickest and darkest form of Art of all times. I cannot tell exactly HOW they do it but the band is able to recreate a kind of dark, hypnotic, demonic atmosphere which moves something inside me that was slumbering inside me since the early nineties. Influences of Hellhammer (a LOT of Hellhammer), Incantation, Imprecation, Symphony of Grief, early Samael, old Paradise Lost and some old school Finnish doom/death (and damn I can even say Disincarnate) are abundant but perfectly balanced in a strictly personal interpretation Metal of fucking Death which is equally obscure and spiritually powerful. This is a band which is 280 times more Black than your average Norwegian penguin. Everything is stripped to the bone, leaving only no nonsense quality music. The vocals are deep and demonical, reverberating as if they were coming from beyond the grave, the guitars deep and grating, slowly evocative of images of gothic damnation. There is really something infernal going on here, haven’t heard this kind of feeling since Immolation‘s “Dawn of Possession”.

Worship Him records re-released this third Necros Christos demo “Grave Damnation” in Cd format – which is a bit disappointing for me since this is the only one I already had in tape, but whatever, anything from this band seems to be sold out nowadays so it is a great buy for people looking for anything by the band. The packaging is superb and everything again just falls in its place in this grand design of blasphemic necromanic Death Metal . A great Goatlord cover ends the Cd.

I am sure I have already heard something similar in style in the past but really cannot remember when… what matters anyway is that Necros Christos has a full-length album out now, so go for it as well.