I seem to have had a lot of female fronted material recently and this band hailing from Colorado is fronted by the scary Holly whose vocal barking is truly demonic and a match for Simone of Cerebral Bore or Jill from Funerus in terms of gutturalness. You can’t beat the sound of an air raid siren and machine gun fire to start off a death metal release as this EP has a running start with some blasting ferocity on “Decaying Monument”. There is little in the way of subtlety with barraging blast beats and deluging double kick groove, the kind I love to bits in all honesty. There is a definite old school US death metal vibe going on here though there are also huge traits of Blood Red Throne on the riff melodies. “Undetermined Supplication” has Vader from the very early days of the debut firmly embedded in it as well as Deicide dementedness. Blood Red Throne is definitely entrenched in “Repacious Temptest” with an unrelenting snare beat that is extremely dominant. In places the riffing has a blackened edge for a bit more variety but overall this is full on brutalising death metal.
The title track again has a tad of blackness about it but is beastly heavy and pummelling. The riff in the middle of the tune is savagely brilliant. Penultimate bombardment is “Exquisite Plague” which once underway reeks of debut Vader as I mentioned earlier. This is not a bad thing and in fact reminded me of the uniqueness of Vader’s “The Ultimate Incantation” released nearly 20 years ago now. I am a total sucker for the riff break followed by the cymbal smash and blast technique, something that takes me into my affection for grind. The double bass is inevitable and fits perfectly in the song. Closing tune is a sort of outro piece that has bits of Obituary about it and whilst it is fine in its own right it did end the EP rather disappointingly which is a shame as this is a gnarly little bastard that I enjoyed tremendously.
(7/10 Martin Harris)
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