Conceived back in 2007 by German musician / vocalist Natrgaard, listeners were taken on a path that judging by titles took a DSBM route. Having not heard them I can only make an educated guess on that. After an 8-year hiatus with massive gaps between the two albums released, the one-man act was resurrected and signed to Immortal Frost Productions to deliver MMXX in (obviously) 2020. As our reviewer who covered it at the time pointed out quite correctly this took a different direction with an emphasis on black n’ roll aspects, complete with tortured vocals in the vein of acts like Darkthrone and Sarke, completed with session drummer Jonas Scmidd. Listening to this now again I can’t say there was anything particularly remarkable about it.

Well blow me down with a very heavy hammer, two years later Natrgaard is back (I am guessing with Jonas) with follow up ‘Anthem Of Decay’ and have upped the ante immeasurably with a work that actually is pretty damn remarkable and then some! Sometimes all you need in your blackness is immeasurable hate, violence and misanthropy, all dished up with huge lashings of speed and aggression. If that’s what you are looking for, welcome to beyond (fucking) hell, it’s here in spades!

The black n’ roll style is 90% dispensed with. Opener ‘Inexorable’ has a large hint of it once it flails in after some lunatic, gibbering vocals but is steamrollered over with extremity in all respects including its more than powerful production. Once that burst of groove ruggedly gets swiped out the way and we move into ‘Mass Of Obedience’ the album picks things up with huge emphasis on velocity and steamrollers away through the duration until the surprise of a sublime acoustic guitar part at the end of penultimate track ‘Infinity Of Stone.’ Vocals scream in hideously elongated shrieks, guitars shred, drums bounce and batter and to say the cut and thrust of things is like being caught in a whirlwind is no exaggeration. There’s no gaps between tracks either, just a very brief rumble of void like distortion, like a foul breath from the sulphurous pits of hell, before the next violent diatribe is flung out.

The album pretty much blew me away on first listen and over continuous spins this deliverance on “the scourge of humanity” as spat out on the title track has continued to impress and knock me for six, six, six. ‘Ceremony Of Primal Urge’ is no less heavy but does put some creepy stalking lines into things upping the atmosphere and making you coldly shiver wondering if hell has decided to resurrect the dead from their graves. If you want to witness just how fast and virulent things get give ‘Atrophied’ a blast. It’s absolutely scathing and would give the likes of Marduk a run for their money as it thunders away crushing everything in its mangled path. With the double whammy of ‘Dust Of Golgotha’ there’s no letting up of the incendiary firepower.

The album could well have been fittingly concluded after that aforementioned instrumental guitar part but a collaboration with Blood Torrent who I assume is the German band of that name on closer ‘Coeval Distemper’. The vocalist is definitely different here, delivering more in the way of hoary bellows on this one and it gives things a slightly different flavour on what can only be described as an action-packed album. Concluding a busy year for Immortal Frost Productions, as far as I am concerned they have left the best till last and ‘Anthem Of Decay’ lives up to its name, oozing toxicity from every pore.

(8.5/10 Pete Woods)

https://digital.immortalfrostproductions.com/album/anthem-of-decay