My only listening experience with this German death metal band was with 2015’s ‘Iron Flesh’ which I enjoyed, so quite why I never kept up with the subsequent release ‘Catacombs’ in 2018 I have no idea. However, it has taken five years for the band to release their fourth full length armed with new vocalist, Florian Bauer, helming the front mic with his guttural tones and rancid harshness.
Whilst Atomwinter is predominantly death metal focused, the band veer their music into plenty of subgenres, which I’ll come to later, as the album kicks off with an eerie if slightly predictable intro to set the scene for the earth-shattering bedlam that ensues on ‘Ov Blood And Flesh’. The abrasive and truly grating guitar sound is one I always like in death metal and here it has the ability to flay without mercy on every song the band subjects you to. Within their aggressive face-ripping assault the band likes to divert their songs down boulevards of brutalising doom death, reining the speed in to unveil a suffocating aura that chokes the life from you as I did think a fair amount of their music is like Asphyx, even down to the Van Drunen like vocal tone, which is no bad thing.
‘The Lungs Ov Hell’ follows and the switch to a Swedeath buzzsaw riffing style is where you get those subgenre touches, the song charges at you like with berserker like qualities where the speed changes enable the song to feel that more energetic and packed with impetus. I also really liked the follower to it, ‘Brutal Scriptures’, a song steeped in old school deathliness as the vocal tone here reminded me of Kam Lee on Massacre’s ‘From Beyond’ album, just that sense of demonic toning makes the song feel that bit more horrifying and degenerate. Smashing in like a tank battalion is ‘The Dark Void’ a song rammed with Bolt Thrower styled density, the warring metal demolition producing a monstrous track that seems to enshroud. Likewise with the awesome title track, its battering speed belies its groove like mentality as here we get another underlying subgenre infestation, namely crust and d-beat nihilism which empowers the song to be extremely catchy, relatively speaking that is, as the bone-crumbling double bass enhances the songs addictive power. Plus, when you get the clean vocal chant you have a song saturated with charisma in a Nile sort of way.
‘Cryptic Death’ has tons of Cannibal Corpse like riffage, with double kick rolls steamrollering the listener alongside its inherent groove as it is followed by the equally cool song ‘Until The Loss Ov God’, a short sonic blunt force trauma that initially seems rather calm until it gathers momentum with its fine deathly groove. ‘Born Into Iron Coffins’ is the closer, an isolated chainsaw riff beginning the carnage as the song plunges back into old school death metal dynamics with blended variations in tempo to the switching riffs making the song a great conclusion to a fine album.
Plenty for the discerning death metal monger here, laced with old school traits but plenty of modernised pulverising for a very cool album indeed.
(8.5/10 Martin Harris)
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