This German quintet have been around for a while releasing 4 albums prior to this, the last one ‘Nightmares Reign’ saw them on Century Media back in 2018. We also caught the band the year before supporting Mantar which seems a good fit. Delirium is a ballsy EP with seven tightly honed numbers spanning 24 minutes of music and sees the group now on Into Endless Chaos Records. It offers plenty of shades of death and one gets the feeling the group have been streamlining styles to get to where they are now. There seems to be mention of grindcore attached to their past and shorter songs were the norm for them. Today that approach is a little different.

The title track has some sinister guitar parts which coil around the listener before a humungous scream is unleashed by vocalist Tony, at the end of it a reverb ridden death grunt is spewed forth and the drums pummel in. Production and everything about this are suitably gnarly and there is a blackened groove about the furrowing guitar work. Their form of Delirium is the very bottom of the bottle, obsidian and dark, vomited out after a night on the tiles. Hangover sets in on ‘Repulsive Obsession’ with a slower churn before they bomb back into things with guttural growls and a noticeable bouncing metalpunk bombast. There’s some razor-sharp guitar interplay and an underlying savagery and sickness even in the slower parts. ‘Noise’ is also cited here as well and this is found in two shorter interludes such as ‘From The Ends Of The Abyss’ which is a disquieting soundscape rumbling away with sinister whispers in the background and ambient turmoil and shrill guitar sounds.

You certainly can’t say this all sounds the same and there is a fair amount of differentiation between tracks. The cracking drums, sinuous guitar and rollocking rhythm of ‘Someone To Bleed’ has as much about an obscure death rock band as it does anything OSDM. As for closer ‘Sepulchral Rapture’ classic speed metal riffs and particularly ugly vocals could easily see this lot being a good stage fit as support to Midnight when they swing into town. I maybe slightly late to the Deathrite ritual but then again, I could have come to it at the perfect time as this is right up my blackened Straße.

(7.5/10 Pete Woods)

https://www.facebook.com/deathrite666

https://deathrite.bandcamp.com/album/delirium-ep