(This is the final installment in a seven-record review orgy by our man DGR, who is attempting to free his mind for year-end season by clearing away a backlog of write-ups for albums he has enjoyed in 2020. Today’s subject is a new EP by the German band Abhorrent Castigation, which was released in late August.)
It has been a little while since I’ve found a band by falling into the social media vortex of going from band to band to band, exploring who was playing shows with whom, who is showing up in various band recommendation segments, etc., and Germany’s Abhorrent Castigation were a result of such an adventure.
I’ve mused a few times in reviews this year about groups that I feel get slid across my metaphorical desk because someone listened to them and went ‘oh, I know exactly who to give that to’. Well, the opposite happened with Abhorrent Castigation. I listened to their new EP and knew that had it not crossed my desk, they would’ve eventually found their way on here anyway because they have appeared on this very site before – granted, way back in the yonder days of 2014, but still. It’s a good bet that eventually they would’ve appeared fully formed out of the mist once again, bringing their hybrid of brutal death, grind, and slam as all hell.
Emerging from the other side of the social media wormhole plus random-band button on Metal-Archives’ quantum equation revealed that Abhorrent Castigation had released a new EP in late August entitled On The Shores Of Hell. The group’s combination of brutal death and varying slam elements makes for a thundering approach, with a vocalist who is content to compete with the Earth’s tectonic plate shifts for lowest, most consistent rumbling for about fifteen minutes. They are currently a two-piece project, though for a while had shared members with another brutal project (for which Germany seems to have nailed down the formula) named Maximize Bestiality. Considering they hail from the same country that gave us Begging For Incest eight years ago (written up here), at the very least we can rest assured that our SEO results are going to be an amusing disaster for a long time to come.
Whose desk then, do I think would this would have eventually crawled across? It’s a combination of things: For one, the brutal death flavorings present here hold some serious appeal. The dark and abyssal nature of On The Shores Of Hell could easily hold sway over our lovely head honcho, while the vocal work and rapid-fire drums could do well among the crowd who enjoy Vonlughlio’s check-ins with the brutal death scene in the PST morning time. Abhorrent Castigation have three five-minute sticks of dynamite on their hands with On The Shores Of Hell and all three flow into one another. We’re fans of describing things as pulse-pounding maelstroms of sound, but the lurching monster that Abhorrent Castigation portrays during the EP is perfectly fine dancing between the two, while becoming the death metal equivalent of the inside of a steel forge.
It’s been a long time coming as the group’s followup to Throne Of Existential Abandonment, but the three songs here show that the two musicians behind the controls remain lethal. While the logo artwork and the fact that one of the main drivers of the project uses the name Thorso may tip you off to the sort of chugging death metal that you will be in for here, the opening notes of “Nocturnal” will definitely make it clear. While I’m a big fan of trying to imagine anything resembling the lyrics of On The Shores Of Hell being channeled through the massive ‘brrrrvvvmmmmmm’ growl that the band employ, it also hits like a solid shock to the system when you need it.
Since it seems like metal is turning its eye toward this pustule-filled corner of the death metal world at the moment in its quest for ever heavier, ever more brutal, sounds, Abhorrent Castigation are a great candidate to look into.
BANDCAMP:
https://abhorrentcastigationoffical.bandcamp.com
FACEBOOK:
https://www.facebook.com/AbhorrentCastigation