You’re probably already thinking it, if you don’t already know that is, but yes I suspect this band’s name comes from the title of Archgoat’s 2006 album and is a bloody good band name too. There’s nothing like blasphemic controversy to get yourself noticed, whether intentionally or not, and whilst this third album by the Texan’s is my first listening experience I did listen to the band’s first two albums (Upon Judas’ Throne’ and ‘Extinguish The Light’) to get an idea of where they came from musically plus the first two were issued in 2014 and 2017 respectively so the gap between the ‘Extinguish The Light’ and this latest is quite sizeable. Very little has changed in those intervening six years, the band unleashes a firestorm of brutalising mayhem on every release but personally this third album augments everything on the previous two into this monstrous slab of unhinged sonic violence.
From the cover art to the music everything about this release reeks of utter malevolence as opener ‘Enlightenment Through Pain’ detonates from the speakers with murderous barbarity as one thing about this album that pummels you to dust is it’s the sound, it has that dense enveloping and impacting production style you adored about some of the albums back in early 90s death metal scene. What WOB also add to their songs is a blackened quality that courses through the riffing but also the insane speed that is deployed as acts like Angelcorpse and Vital Remains offer a similarity to a degree. However, it is the death metal destruction that fans will love as the battering speed pins you back on ‘Nails In Your Coffin’ where that blackened feathering produces a sinister hideous aura amidst the relentless approach. Slowing down a tad is ‘Ritual Of Homicide’ where the pervading double kick plunges the track into a bituminous crevasse before the guitar shifts to hyper speed riffs and lead work. With the equally monstrous and beastly vocal styles you get a song, and album, that is wholly terrifying on all fronts.
‘Vermin’ is awesome, a gargantuan bludgeoning with machine gun blasting velocities topped off by the continually morphing dynamics within the riffs and the punishing unremitting intensity. A short interlude called ‘Gateway’ gives you time to catch your breath before ‘Sermon Of The Malignant Spirit’ lets loose its missile riffing and grisly ethos. Being slightly calmer, relatively speaking that is, the song is afforded a modicum of dread like atmosphere as the songs slower pacing entrenches it in a miasmic deathly sludge up until the blackened riff explosion. The slower phases within the songs enables the density to increase substantially, as ‘Out Of Body’ proves, where the intermittent assaults enhance the momentum, driving the song forwards with ferocious aplomb, especially when the track deviates in speed.
There is nothing I don’t like about this album, everything has been sequenced brilliantly, the flow from track to track adds to the impetus as the awesome riff to ‘Disembodied’ impales you with gruesome heaviness and it is riffs like these that will have you thinking about Morbid Angel, as the last hammering doublet of the album begins with ‘Monolith Of Cremation’. The riff is immense, as the speed has a similarity to early Deicide alongside the vocal tone too, where the songs seems intent on massacring everyone around who is in firing range, leaving the album to close with a bonus tune titled ‘Pseudochrist’. Originally out in Autumn 2022 as single the song is easily a match for anything on this release as its implacable ruthless savagery shows where blast beat obliteration coupled to the demonic vocalising produces a seismic finale to this exceptional album.
This could have got a ten but I think WOB have more to offer in future so I’ll save it as this third album is as near a perfect blackened death metal bombardment that your insignificant life can subject itself with ten blasphemic annihilations.
(9.5/10 Martin Harris)
Leave a Reply