This is the Italian band with this moniker as I know there are a few others knocking about as the four-piece unleash their fifth and utterly barbaric new album. The intense opening intro ‘Mortem Aeternam’ sets the scene superbly, building to the detonation that ensues with ‘Seeds Of Vengeance’. The sheer brutalising force unleashed here is punishing and pulverising, from the inhuman vocals to the insane drum work everything here is brimming with choking malevolence. I cannot overstate how horrifyingly effective this is, the outright terror of songs like ‘Devil Incarnate’ create an intensity that will leave you sweating and pinned back.
At times spine tingling and oft creepy the band balances the atmospherics with unadulterated power brilliantly as that barbarity I’ve mentioned rarely relents for a second, even on the interlude. There is a nightmarish experience here, one you can immerse yourself within as the hideous riffing and grotesque vocal abominations produce that sense of palpable sonic revulsion you often get with blackened death metal. The band has similarities to Icelandic acts Misþyrming and Svartidauði where they utilise the blackened riffing to craft a veritable onslaught.
There is colossal intensity as you’d expect but particularly on ‘Bloodbath Compendium’ and ‘Crypt Of Existence’ as each tune feels like you’re submerged into the bands degrading sonic depravity. The speed throughout is incessant of course, but the band does pepper their song writing with brief respites that enhance the atmosphere and momentum, but it is the undiluted rage and wrath that makes this release so brilliant. Songs are kept relatively short too, adding to that sense of impetus as ‘In Chaos, In Death’ blasts in with unapologetic power, as does ‘Abysmal Annihilation.
There’s a couple of longer tunes closing the album, beginning with the title track which is immense, the piercing intensity and nihilistic assault offers a ruthless approach but melded in is some catchiness in their own way, not necessarily groove laden but you can hear the band adding subtleties here and there as ‘Nemesis Of Thy Mortals’ closes this excellent album. Being longer I was expecting something a bit more restrained, more atmospheric, far from it the song is ludicrously intense, the scraping lead work adding to the album’s homicidal modus operandi.
There are few albums as murderous, ferocious and violent as ‘Death Siege’ it has everything you would want from the blackened death genre and even the black metal genre that will leave you sonically exhausted and ruined.
(9.5/10 Martin Harris)
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