From Saudi Arabia they came to Germany with their brutal death metal. The band Sijjeel is almost 10 years old. This “force of bone-breaking intensity, wrapped in a cloak of nightmares” is their first full release to go with an earlier ep.

This takes me back a bit to the days of going to hoary old North London pubs and having a great evening listening to the raw sound of growly underground death metal bands for a couple of quid. It’s fiery of course, technical and full of pungent nastiness in the riffage, yet somehow aesthetically pleasing to the warped-minded like myself. Having been torn to shreds by “Isolation Behind Unrealism” it’s time for the title track to beat us to death. The low-key riff adds the menace to the hammering drum. The chunking mechanical rhythm could give you a headache but it’s too much fun for that. The juggernaut continues with “The Affliction of Deteriorating Minds”. The ripping apart of flesh competition is on. This is music of the attritional kind, not the whirlwind sort. From “Mental Paralysis” we go to “Climbing into the Abyss”, another ferocious flesh-ripping technical beast. “Departing from Human Nature” takes the heavy machinery further down the path of destruction and devastation. As it slows down, there is an air of finality. One thing that Sijjeel is very good at is managing tempo and using breaks to create an irregular flow in order to reinforce the sense of chaos and carnage. Defensiveness and reflection are not attributes of this album. Slaughter and brutality are, and both are well in evidence on the irrepressible “Indignation Overcame Me”. Not only indignation, I suggest, but a profound sense of suffering and ire. My initial reaction was that it’s a shame that the distorted guitar work which opens the final piece of butchery “Inflection to thee Smut” didn’t go on for longer because it adds a dimension. Harsh, hammering, triggering, gruesome brutality takes over, and I’m pleased to say the distortion returns, followed by a furious assault and a final plunge into deep and hostile territory.

Ferocity is a given for this genre, but it’s the technical element that stands out for me here. Brutal death metal can be uniform, but sparks fly here, the music is diverse and horror reigns supreme.

(8/10 Andrew Doherty)

https://www.facebook.com/sijjeelband

https://comatosemusic.bandcamp.com/album/salvation-within-insanity