2023 marks out a 30 year anniversary for Denmark’s Panzerchrist since forming in 1993 under the auspices of Michael Enevoldsen, releasing seven albums plus a handful of demos and EP that started in 1995. In 2013, after the release of the excellent ‘7th Offensive’, the band became completely inactive only to resurface in 2023 with this eighth album plus a wholesale change in the line-up that has seen guitarist Frederik O’Carroll return to the ranks plus the additions of guitarist Danny Bo Pedersen, drummer Danni Jelsgaard and the immense vocals of Sonja Rosenlund Ahl.
Throughout all their albums Panzerchrist have bridged the black and death, or death and black depending on which way you view the band’s music, into seamless unmitigated assaults but with huge amounts of melody. I have listened to all of the bands catalogue and have bagged a few of them on physical products but I can categorically state that this eighth album far exceeds anything that has been released before it, and any of the bands previous albums are not slouches either. The bands hybridising of the black and death genres isn’t about blackened death metal or death infused black metal it is about blending the two extremes into an album that is uncompromisingly superb on all fronts.
‘Turn The Back’ starts the album and an initial isolated guitar piece is quickly sideswiped aside for scathing vocals and an equally caustic guitar sound that strips the flesh from your worthless carcass. At times the intensity of ‘Last Of A Kind’ makes you sweat, the way the riffs and unhinged velocities produce hideous ferocity is staggeringly effective. That vitriol is followed up by ‘My Name Is Lucifer’ as the tempo drops but the causticity does not. For want of a better phrase the blackening of the riffs is pernicious, as the detonation of speed takes your head off, the blast beat speed has an inhuman blur yet is well defined as Sonja’s vocals elevate the corrosive nature to sulphuric savagery.
At eight minutes the title track has an atmospheric opening, and whilst it was tempting to think the band was going to rein in the violence, they do so only for the duration required as the song builds up in intensity, its empowering riffage and thundering double bass drum work affords the song immeasurable density. Keyboard segments worm their way into the mix too, not of the symphonic variety, more akin to electronics adding a layer of texture. Short and not so sweet ‘The Fires On Gallows Hill’ is sub-two minutes of mayhem before ‘The Devils Whore’ returns the release to an epic stature. At times the ultra-violent approach borders on pandemonium yet is ingrained with astounding tempo dynamics and a potency that fans of the war metal genre would appreciate, think Revenge, Bestial Warlust, Blasphemy, etc.
‘Sabbath Of The Rat’ has been released as a single, and listening to it you can understand why as whilst bands often adopt a track that has more accessibility Panzerchrist do the opposite and unveil a blackened atrocity that unleashes one of the albums finest riff breaks with an ensuing bombardment to follow. ‘Baptized In Piss’, (why does baptized look better with a z than an s!), does exactly what you’d expect with a song title like this, the noise effects that commence it only serve to add a foreboding menace to the impending barbarity which duly arrives with homicidal efficiency leaving ‘Juniper Creek’ to close the album. With no ceremony the song blasts in, a titanic assault blended with tuneful bridges and an immensity that never wavers during its seven minutes plus the previous 38 that preceded it.
An astonishing album by Panzerchrist, one that firmly plants them back on the world extreme metal stage as I sincerely hope the band gets over to the UK to tour at some point because these songs deserve to be heard live.
(9.5/10 Martin Harris)
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