(Andy Synn takes us on a trip to the Death Metal underground of Chile today)
It’s been suggested, perhaps not unfairly, that I’ve been neglecting the Death Metal side of things recently.
So to make up for this (while acknowledging that I’ve definitely covered stuff from Carbon Tomb, Altarage, and a bunch of other short form releases all in the last month or so) I decided that today would be the day we’d dive head-first into the Chilean Death Metal scene in all its nasty, blasty brilliance.
GODAGAINST – DEVOURING NAMELESS ABYSS
When it comes to jagged, neck-wrecking Death Metal brutality, Godagainst‘s new album could absolutely give the likes of Hour of Penance and Hate Eternal a serious run for their money, kicking off with the appropriately explosive assault of “Atomic Reincarnation” and then barely pausing for breath until the final fading chords of the record’s chugging, churning closer.
As guttural and gargantuan as the album may be, what makes it stand out from the pack is the emphasis on songwriting – the aforementioned “Atomic Reincarnation”, for example, shifts from a hammering assault on the senses to a heaving, groove-heavy lurch in its second half, while the ominous, doom-laden intro and outro of “Ignominous Kingdoms Disseminated” wraps the song in a gloriously grim aura – which gives these tracks (well, most of them anyway) a certain je ne s’ais quoi that only helps enhance their appeal.
And it’s these moments – the suffocating, slow-motion finale of “Venomous Insemination”, the cunning contrast between the blazing, technical tumult which opens “Bioextraphysical Cult” and its brooding, back-breaking second half, the eerie, flickering bass-lines that thread in and out of “The Faceless” and its grim, groaning stop-start stomp – which should ensure that Devouring Nameless Abyss stays in pretty regular rotation, rather than just blasting in one ear and out the other!
IMPERATHRON – POLEMOS PATER PANTON
Taking a slightly more “blackened” path, the new album from Imperathron sits somewhere between the raw intensity of bands like Angelcorpse and Perdition Temple on the one hand, and the monstrous heaviness of Azarath or Immolation on the other (which, obviously, is a Very Good Thingtm)
Focussing more on unrelenting punishment than anything else (drummer VI is essentially a one-man artillery battery), the music is still capable of being surprisingly, almost shockingly, hooky, especially when the group switch tactics and employ some gut-punch, ground ‘n’ pound grooves (“Follow Your Shadow”) or a dash of devilish melody (“Polemos Pater Panton”), or both in quick succession (“Ancestral Shadow”).
True, at times the sheer “everything turned up to 11” approach can induce a bit of listener-fatigue (as impressive as the idea of a seven minute Brutal/Blackened Death Metal track like “Stahlwalküren” might be on paper, the over-reliance on just varying forms of blastbeats means it does get a bit samey in practice), but the cutting tremolo riffs of “I Will Kill the Traitor” and the occasional shift into a darker and more menacing mode of attack (the massive finale of “I Am Ares” is one of the album’s undeniable high points) should ensure that your attention never wavers no matter how hard, or how often, you get hit.
SEPULCRUM – LACERATOR
Riff-focused “old school” Death Metal firmly in the vein of Morbid Angel and Death, but with enough of a modern edge to also appeal to fans of the likes of Tomb Mold and Witch Vomit, the new album from Sepulcrum will likely tick a lot of your boxes if you’re a fan of the deathly arts in any way, shape, or form.
Surprisingly melodic at times – at least in the sense that the twisted guitars and brooding grooves of songs like “The Seven Gates” (which also includes a nifty bass solo) and the proggy, early-Cynic inspired “Entropic Decomposition” aren’t afraid to add some piercing hooks to the mix – while still keeping things as nasty and as gnarly as possible (there’s some serious grit in the vocals, that’s for sure), there’s also an impressively fluid sense of dynamic woven into the band’s sound that keeps them from being just another retro throwback.
I’ll grant you that if you remove the two instrumental interludes, plus one or two of the other tracks that don’t quite reach their full potential, there’s a little less metallic meat on the proverbial bone here than it first appears, but stand-out cuts – including the utterly frantic, full-force fretwork of “Phrenetic Psychophony” and the aforementioned “The Seven Gates”, plus face-melting, shape-shifting closer “Multideformation” (which suggests that the band would do well to really go all-in on their proggier urges in the future) – are still worth sinking your teeth into next time you get a craving for some rich, bloody Death Metal.