Wrathprayer
Sun of Moloch
2013 Nuclear War Now! Productions
Chile's Wrathprayer are the missing link between the unapologetic brutality of Archgoat and the esoteric onslaught of Necros Christos. Dark and malevolent sounding? Yes. Fast and blasting? Aye. Swirling maelstrom of metal chaos? You bet. It seems that three members is all it really takes these days to play in this uber-intense black/death metal style (or two if you don't intend to play live), and Wrathprayer are no exception. Three is a number of power. Celebrity deaths and bad news come in threes. Three sides to a triangle, which can be seen as a symbol of strength and power. Three members in a band, all working together with no room for anyone to slack off. Am I at all surprised that Wrathprayer hail from Chile? Not one bit. I have yet to find a band from that nation that is happy sounding and finds pleasure in life. Not even one. It seems to be that every band that hails from that part of the world is angry and hateful, and they're not afraid to express it. This sub-genre of metal, whatever it is termed... (I think "war metal" is the popular term?) has a sound far more sinister and depraved than virtually anything that has come before. Morbid Angel? Lightweights. Venom? A cartoon. Mayhem? A minor menace. Bestial Warlust? OK, now we're talking forefather to this sound. Some would call it ugly music for uglier people. And they're probably right.
The Skeletal
Remains
2013 Metal Inquisition
To the best of my knowledge, the songs here were recorded during the sessions for The Skeletal's debut, "The Plague Rituals." For whatever reason, they saved them for this mini-CD. That's fine with me, although all this really does is make me wish for the follow-up full-length. For those with short memories, the main members of The Skeletal are Kam Lee, who needs no introduction, and Lasse Pyykkö, best known for his work in Hooded Menace and Phlegethon. The four songs here (plus intro) follow the early sound pioneered by Mantas, Death and Master. Simple, straightforward, and effective as all hell. Kam's vocal style is his own, of course. Very understandable and gruff... yet also apparently devoid of the wipeouts and other trademarks. Most of his lyrics here come from the same primeval morass that birthed things better left un-named which then crawled forth from the murk and settled in the brain of HP Lovecraft. No shoggoths or blind idiot gods here though. You'll have to settle for the fetid undead and demon-inhabited bodily remains. But I'm sure you won't mind, not with Lasse's guitar swirling around in between and through every track to tie it all together with a rope of human intestines. While I would not call this music "fun," I would say that it does take up a kind of opposition to the sort of metal preferred by the scowling "I could play that better" types.
Krypts
Unending Degradation
2013 Dark Descent Records
Yes, I know I go on and on a lot of the time with the same introduction with my reviews. This one is no exception, as Finland's Krypts proves yet again that while Sweden ranks at or close to the top of nations when it comes to death metal, the bands that hail from Finland do it darker. Not only that, but they have also set the bar higher when it comes to morbidity. Sorry Asphyx, you've just been dethroned. Every track here lumbers along like a great beast, with not a single high-end vocal to be found. Everything is low, and the vocals are as deep as they come. Can't understand a word, and that's not a complaint. Unlike a lot of other bands with a similar style, Krypts do not ever sound like a churning mass of chaos. The songs have a real flow to them, and even maintain that pure crushing heaviness when they speed up with a blastbeat or two. Honestly, words are failing me here when it comes to describing just how massive Krypts sounds. If I were to try and sum them up in a word, "inevitable" keeps coming to mind. Why? Because this band is the sonic equivalent of that asteroid that's somewhere out there, on a collision course with Earth. It may take a while to get here, but it is inevitable that it will happen. When a giant rock does hit Earth and devastate the entire planet, I hope I'm listening to Krypts at the moment of impact.
Beyond
Fatal Power of Death
2013 Iron Bonehead Productions / Necroshrine Records
Germany's Beyond have a definite contender for best album of the year with "Fatal Power of Death." Besides "Unending Degradation" by Krypts it's the best thing I've heard so far in 2013. Beyond vomit forth an impressive wall of sound, and time and again I hear them compared to Necrovore. I have to admit that I do hear a lot of similarities in both bands' controlled chaos. I think there's a lot more blasting on the drums, possibly an influence from the Ross Bay style cult sound of Blasphemy. The album is an all-out attack at full, or close to full speed, with a sound that practically serves as a new definition of what "death metal" is. Other comparisons I've been seeing reference Autopsy, Immolation, Napalm Death and Incantation. Personally, I hear none of those. This isn't sewer-sludge style, nor death metal-tinged grindcore. It's also not as suffocatingly claustrophobic as Incantation or brutally technical like Immolation. But enough about what "Fatal Power of Death" isn't. Let's focus instead on what it is: cavernous, massive ungodly metal of death. Pure of sound and anything but simple. Anyone who says that death metal has become stagnant just isn't paying attention. Definitely one of those bands that will have true fans of death metal asking, "Where have you been all my life?"
Sorcery
Arrival at Six
2013 Xtreem Music
The first thing that hits you on "Arrival at Six" is... well, the whole band. There's no intro or lead-in. Everyone, including vocalist Ola Malmström come right out of the gate with all guns blazing, phasers set to "kill," swords at the ready... you get the idea. The second thing you notice is that the production is a lot more raw and in your face than you're used to hearing from Swedish death metal bands, especially these days. As far as I'm concerned, the sound they got in the mix is a welcome change from the usual attempts of trying to recapture the style of Unisound or Sunlight Studios. This was deliberate, and I was surprised to learn that the drums were actually recorded at Sunlight Studios, and the album was mixed there as well. It's just so unlike what we're accustomed to hearing when it comes to the metal that comes out of there. There's an incredible old-school feel here, and there's a damn good reason for that. Sorcery aren't some new band trying to recreate the old glory days. Sorcery were there at the beginning, and gave us an true classic in 1991's "Bloodchilling Tales." If things had ended there, then they would have joined the same ranks as Authorize, Crematory (Sweden, not Germany!), Bloodstone, Mefisto and others. So full of promise but without that one critical break they needed to get to the next step. Fast forward to the here and now. Ola and Paul Johansson got back together, recruited John Falk (who was part of In Aeternum with Paul at one point) on drums, and one Mikael Carlsson on bass. Since the recording of this album, Mikael has been replaced by Jacob Wibers (also in Sordid Flesh, who I hear have an album coming out soon). A few demos were put together, and the end result was "Arrival at Six." Sorcery still play the same kind of Swedish styled death metal they did in their original incarnation, and that leads me to the third thing that hits you with this album. Ola's vocals are very understandable, in the same way as other guys who have been around for a while like Martin van Drunen, LG Petrov and Marc Grewe. That's a real rarity these days where all we seem to hear are guys who are doing their level best to ruin themselves and are so gutteral, they might as well be singing the phone book. Bottom line here is, we have a band that's going their own way, doing their music the way they want to, with the sound they want to, and not giving a damn about conforming to what anyone's idea of what an "old school" band is supposed to sound like.
Johansson & Speckmann
Sulphur Skies
2013 Vic Records
Teamups are always big. Superman and Batman, Spider-Man and Daredevil, Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant, peanut butter and chocolate... the list goes on and on. So a meeting of these metal megapowers had to happen sooner or later. Given that this is death metal, the teamup of Rogga Johansson and Paul Speckmann isn't comparable to any of the ones I mentioned. No, this is more like Doctor Doom working together with Thanos to conquer all existence. Only without ridiculous egos or backstabbing machinations... or some stupid hero getting in the way. On the one side, you have a true legend in the underground, in the form of Paul Speckmann. The guy has been around since before the death metal scene even started. He is, without a doubt, one of the true founders. On the other side, is a legend in the making, Rogga Johansson. The man is a riff-writing machine. About the only other guy from Sweden I can think of who even comes close is Nicke Terror (Rudolphson), known for his work in Sacramentum, Swordmaster, Runemagick, Deathwitch and Necrocurse, along with a few others. Rogga on the other hand seems to have something new going on every month. All killer, no filler. And that's the case here as well. While the guitar tone has that undeniable tone of Swedish distortion, the riffs are made of the same punk-inspired stuff that spawned Master. The production's a little thinner and drier than I might have expected or wanted, but none of that hinders the music in any way, shape or form. Speckmann's lyrics of course still things as he sees them. This world is on a collision course with oblivion, and we'd all better wake the fuck up if we want to try and stop it... if it's not too late already. For anyone wondering why this duo went with the name "Johansson and Speckmann," the answer is obvious. Nothing was brutal enough to call the band, so using their names was the logical solution.
Oniricous
Ritos Diabolicos
2013 Razorback Records
Bands with lyrics inspired by HP Lovecraft are more or less a dime a dozen these days. But take those lyrics and put them in Spanish, and you've got something far more occult than you may have planned on. I don't know what it is, but death metal bands that sing in Spanish always end up sounding far more evil. Maybe it's not a coincidence that the movie, "Tombs of the Blind Dead," also comes to us by way of Spain. Now you can call Oniricous "old school death metal," but it's probably not the kind you're thinking of. This is the kind of metal we used to hear from bands like Possessed, Sacrifice, and yes... Death (on "Scream Bloody Gore," of course). So yeah, older than old school, bitches. Armed with loads of razor sharp riffs, vocals that come from a half-man, half-wolf, and a nice thick production, "Ritos Diabolicos" is an album not to be missed. Expect this album to be virtually ignored by all those big-name metal magazines at the end of the year when they're making their "best of 2013" lists. They're all too busy wanking over the new Carcass album to take notice of something far more killer like this! On a side note, I found out that Oniricous came out of another band called Ghül. They have an album from 2009 called "Los Horrores de la Tumba." I'd love to track down a copy, but only 100 of them are in existence.
