(DGR continues to do the heavy lifting at our site while many of us (and him) are off at Maryland Deathfest, and today’s it’s a vivid write-up about a new EP from the Swedish old-school thrashers Venthiax, out now on Dying Victims Productions.)
Every year inevitably sees a smorgasbord of EPs released throughout the year. It’s enough that our own archive of them gets broken out into its own year-end post and usually runs just as long as our collection of album ratings.
EPs are often a realm of discovery, experimentations, and teasers of upcoming albums. This is something I personally enjoy quite a bit, because all of these snack-sized previews of groups and what sorts of headspace they may be in means you can sample so many groups in the same way a kid can go plowing through the sample segments of a candy shop. To be fair, I probably approach it with the same amount of joy.
It also allows room to explore genres that aren’t normally in your wheelhouse, not necessarily full-blown pig-ignorance but close enough. Old school throwbacks and thrash metal are definitely part of that on this end and the combination of the two have resulted in a fountain of bands that sound as if they’re time travelers from a bygone and especially kvlt era in heavy metal’s sound.
Sweden’s Venthiax are standing on a few different genre-lines with their newest EP, Rites Of Ra. Their combination of blackened thrash and old school approach has created a salivating twenty minutes worth of music that crashes its way through multiple genre-blueprints and foundations with the grace of a drunk rhinoceros, and the six songs present are as exciting as trying to hold on to the back of it the whole time.
You can tell from moment one where Venthiax aim to be, judging by the cavernous production on the Rites Of Ra EP. That low-end-dominated, heavy thud was a driving force of heavy metal’s sound when it was exploding outwards and defining itself, and all of the map-markers of it are being hit during Rites Of Ra.
Venthiax sound like a creature out of time, even though they were formed in 2021 and have existed largely in demo and EP form. Rites Of Ra marks the group’s second EP, and some of the material here had been captured in embryonic form on a live album put out last year. That sort of willful existence as a creature of the underground is a banner flown proudly for bands like Venthiax, and a more polished approach might actually remove some of the mystique. The muddier production and recording gives Rites Of Ra the sense of danger that Venthiax are aiming for in their specific take on thrash and their hybridization with the extremity of other genres available to them.
Rites Of Ra consists of six songs: an instrumental opener and five thrash songs with blackened atmospheres wrapping themselves around them. There’s an element of snarling danger to the music here, with the titular “Rites Of Ra” serving as the construction foreman in that regard.
Opener “Warfare” at about two minutes, does a good job as the doorman for the EP – like mentioned early on, you’ll catch about thirty seconds of this song and hear a strong Exciter/Sodom influence by way of Hellhammer crashing through the gates – and then the chest-thumping “Rites of Ra” slams its foot through the stage for the following four.
The speed metal snarl that colors the dual vocalists of Emil Borg and Viggo Heinonen is front and center on this EP, adding a razor’s edge to an already on-fire guitar approach and shelf-shaking bass guitar.
Few songs out there that feel built for an equal measure of beer throwing and circle-pitting quite like “Rites Of Ra” does. It’s not a party-thrash song by any means, but the deft guitar lead that appears about a minute and a half in before the big tempo transition does betray a fair amount of showmanship kept in Venthiax’s back pocket. How else does one explain what sounds like a sword fight breaking out by way of cymbal work two-thirds into the song?
How then, could we not be drawn to something as wonderfully titled as “Speed Metal Mayhem”? If you’re going to wear your hearts on your shoulders quite like that, we can’t help but wish to gaze further within. “Speed Metal Mayhem” has a hard challenge ahead of it as well, laying four songs into the Rites Of Ra EP by this point and having to prove itself worthy of its title.
It’s already had the aforementioned “Rites Of Ra” before it, the bruiser intro of “Warfare”, and the fiery evil of “Infernal Demise” as its elder brethren – if you’re going to be the song to declare yourself the “more metal than all fuck” song when you’ve already had three prior to you doing that exact thing, then the bar is going to be quite high.
“Speed Metal Mayhem” is as glorious as you want it to be in that regard, a consistently heavy attack that never lets up and spills blood with its many guitar solos in praise of heavy metal. If you’re going to do a song like this you need to be completely bought into your bullshit, even better if you can come off as the main provider of said bullshit as well. Venthiax do a solid job on both fronts and “Speed Metal Mayhem” more than earns its title.
The funnier part is that right afterward you have the even-faster madness of “Dawn Of Terror” for a few minutes as well, for about eight total minutes of spinning madness.
As ghouls of the underground, the grunted and growled attack serves Venthiax well. Their sound is one reminiscent of heavy metal’s fiery years and it is one they’re resurrecting with ease. There is no need for Venthiax to carve new boundaries within the world of heavy metal, they’re doing just as well as emissaries from a nuclear wasteland, mutants spreading the word of a knife-sharp brand of speed metal that could fly under a few different guises and be correctly called under each one.
You can split the band apart into a handful of different influences for sure, but Rites Of Ra is more a sum of its parts: an excellent combination of thrashier riffs, murderous vocals, and a rhythm section content to leave listeners bruised by the time they’re done. At a hair over twenty-minutes, the six songs here are perfect for a quick hit to the system that’ll leave one with widened pupils and cold forehead sweats. There’s no spotlight theft to be had in Venthiax’s case but the band are criminally good at turning a circle-pit riff into something akin to a tornado within about twenty seconds, and that alone deserves commendation.
https://dyingvictimsproductions.bandcamp.com/album/rites-of-ra
https://www.facebook.com/p/Venthiax-100090480222392/