(written by Islander)
Devenial Verdict’s new record could be considered a retrospective on a 20-year career, but also a reimagining of their past. As a reflection of that concept, the name of the record (which is a combination of two EPs) is Old Blood – Fresh Wounds. To explain, here’s this Finnish band’s statement about the record, which is now set for release by Transcending Obscurity on May 1st:
“This release celebrates the 20th anniversary of Devenial Verdict. We wanted to update some of our older songs on this EP; these songs mark some of the most important musical moments of us as a band. We have the first instances of dissonance in our music and the seeds of our melancholic and atmospheric leanings; we have brutal passages and rare instances of melody. It was really eye opening to realise that all the influences were there all along! Some of these songs have never been properly released and exist only as live videos captured at our shows.
“We wanted to add the Soulthirst EP to this release since 2026 marks the 10 year anniversary for that release. Soulthirst functions as the bridge between all of our older material and our current sound, which we fully unleashed on Ash Blind in 2022.”
What we have for you today is the premiere of the new album’s opening song, “Rituals of Ignorance“. According to a note at Metal-Archives, it was originally part of a four-song demo recorded in 2010 but never officially released.
When we premiered the title song to the above-mentioned Ash Blind we expressed these thoughts:
Time brings change, and thus Ash Blind represents alterations in Devenial Verdict’s sound, revealing more prominent dissonant and atmospheric elements in the music. The band show themselves capable of creating vast sonic vistas that are as entrancing as they are unnerving. But while Devenial Verdict have clearly spread their creative wings in expansive fashion from where they began, the songs also make for potent adrenaline fuel through bursts of obliterating hostility and grooves that hit hard enough to give your spine and skull a terrific jolting.
The band followed Ash Blind in 2024 with a new album named Blessing of Despair, which reinforced and expanded their reputation as purveyors of dissonant, atmospheric death metal that often twists and turns in unexpected directions. We hosted a premiere for that album too, describing the music as managing “to sound feral and ferocious, menacing and mad, agony-steeped and preternatural — and it’s high-octane headbang fuel too.”
And now we come to the band’s updating of “Rituals of Ignorance” — and a monstrous piece of work it is. In just the first 20 seconds the music brutally hammers and viciously thrusts, then ghoulishly lumbers and poisonously churns. As ghastly roars and rabid howls arrive, the music also feverishly slashes and maniacally squeals.
The song never stays in one place for very long. The tempo is in constant flux, and so is the riffing, veering from primitive stomps to tremolo-driven convulsions of mayhem, punctuated by sudden stops and screeching strings — and the vocals aren’t confined either as they range from ravenous growls and roars to savage screams.
Near the end the band also suddenly segue into a more slow-moving passage of morbidly groaning and miserably wailing melody — one more change in a song packed to the brim with changing experiences, all of them nightmarish.
And so we turn you over to the music, and congratulate Devenial Verdict on not only surviving for 20 years but continuing to make such tremendously good death metal.
DEVENIAL VERDICT:
Okko Tolvanen – Drums
Sebastian Frigren – Guitars, backing vocals
Antti Poutanen – Bass, backing vocals
Riku Saressalo – Vocals
Old Blood – Fresh Wounds features cover art by Niilas Nissilä. Transcending Obscurity will release it on vinyl LP, jewelcase CD, and digital formats, with lots of related apparel and other merch. See the locations linked below for more details — and we’ve also included the first two songs revealed from the album, “Elysium” and “Fall of Faith” (the latter being one of the tracks included on the new release from 2016’s Soulthirst EP).
PRE-ORDER:
https://devenialverdictband.bandcamp.com/album/old-blood-fresh-wounds
http://transcendingobscurity.aisamerch.com/
http://eu.tometal.com/
DEVENIAL VERDICT:
https://facebook.com/DevenialVerdict
https://instagram.com/devenialverdict