I think sometimes as fans we all kinda forget how hard it is for some bands to actually get music out – the world constantly intervening with irritating necessities like food, a place to sleep, stuff like that getting in the way. No idea what has happened with Sturmtiger but forming in 2007, this is only their second full length and their first in 2014 was pretty much a compilation of recordings. I first came across this WW1 and WW2 obsessed war metal obsessives in 2012 with their Atomic Hammer EP and it’s been a pleasure so far every time something has come my way. And just a thank you for sending the actual CD too; that’s very cool.
So 2023, VJ, BL,PB and SB pop their gas-masked heads above the trench once more for Transcendent Warfare.
‘Forced March’ begins with their characteristic downtuned sound. Relentless drumming and a droning pacy riff with whispered vocals buried so deep in the mud you can almost taste the muck. Discordant guitar runs, dropping into a slow drag, bursting free again. A sound still delightfully thick with filth. ‘Armoured Spearhead’ bursts over the horizon; the death vocals growled and gnarly, the riff heads down determined attack. Aircraft dive, the bombs explode and war goes on. It’s grim, unrestrained brutal and direct death metal with just that blackened filth seeping like oil from the gears. It seems like everything is under black clouds of smoke and gas, the sharp guitar run like tracer fire across the wasteland to me.
‘Imperium’ brings a hammer to the riff. The vocals seem to fall from on high somehow with the way the rattling, fast bludgeoning style hits and it preaches death like a general. ‘War Is Eternal’ begins slowly but gathers a pace and tears through the mud. ‘Transcendent Violence’ has a curious almost groove to it, an off kilter jagged guitar line above the riff here and there. ‘The Baron’ has technical runs somewhere in the murk, machine gun notes ricocheting from metal. ‘Universal Eradicator’ just carpet bombs the survivors with a riff that has a sadistic little hook to it too.
And the smoke doesn’t clear, it simply settles on the debris.
Twenty-seven minutes. But the half hour mark is excellent for this kind of metal for me. It is bleak, grim, unrepentant and brutal. Primitive even, and I mean that as a compliment. It conjures grainy images of relentless mud caked machines crushing limbs and lines over a muddy battlefield. No glory, no honour, just death grinding onwards. Is it an acquired taste? Maybe, but there are many out there who already have that taste and that…something… that was pummelled into me by Atomic Hammer is simply still here and growing. I love it and I love that they are still here doing this.
Like an industrial complex dedicated to war where the things it turns out become more and more primitive as civilisation collapses, Sturmtiger are the sound of the eternal, pointless destruction.
(8.5/10 Gizmo)
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