I had forgotten that I covered the last album by this French outfit ‘Summoning The Putrid’ a couple of years ago. That’s hardly surprising when you think of just how many “Irons” there are in the heavy metal fire; let’s just say well over a hundred of them! This lot had a Swedish HM2 buzz about them and plenty of good leads that alluded to Carcass and they still have these to a certain extent. However, on listening to the 3rd album by the group it is pretty clear they have expanded on this somewhat.
Sound-wise this packs a mighty punch as it limbers up to chop off limbs on opener ‘Overthrow Ov The Sermon Ov God’ and solidly romps away. The guitar and bass have a thick chugging sound but the melodic leads stick out as they weave around things. There’s plenty of metallic groove about the instrumental sections and vocalist Julien gives out a good gruff bark, roaring away on his parts. A rot n’ roll, mid-era Entombed style is noticeable on ‘Cursed Within’ and the track neatly bounces the listener around and includes some cool strident stalking riffs for good measure. As one digs deeper into the graveyard of the album and pulls its bones out, the variation here makes its deadly presence felt. We have a couple of absolute raging bangers of the short and shocking variety such as the title track and the mouthful that is ‘Sacrorum Profanationem’ but there are also some slower Autopsies to contend with such as the rank doom like 7-minute explorations of ‘Blessed Be The Creators’ and ‘Honor In Death.’
There’s plenty to keep your OSDM fans banging heads to the fast parts as well as gurgling in rancid filth for the slower numbers and it’s essentially a pretty damn immediate album that gets hooks in straight off from the very 1st play. Sure, it’s not going to break any records as far as originality is concerned but sometimes something comfortable is just what you need and this is just the gnarly and efficient butchery that I seemingly was hungering for when it turned up on my review pile. Perhaps the final instrumental track ‘Procession Of Living Cadavers’ was surplus to needs pitching the album over the ¾ of an hour mark but it sounds like it has a clarinet in it so one would be churlish complaining too much. Yep, this one is a step up in the right direction. Nothing more really needs to be said.
(7.5/10 Pete Woods)
Leave a Reply