At risk of repeating myself too much I suggest that you check out my review of Anthropophagus Depravity’s debut Apocalypto for some added background. I’ll skim over the basics though. Anthropophagus Depravity are an Indonesian Brutal Death Metal band with a name that utterly exudes the genre. Their style is extremely abrasive, a little generic but genuinely fantastic. They formed back in 2016 and in 2021 dropped their aforementioned debut full length Apocalypto. Now moving away from the Mayan themes and sticking with Comatose Music the band present their second full length Demonic Paradise.
I cannot stress enough how little time is wasted, straight out of the gate into pounding barbaric drumming, guitars, bass and guttural vocals with The Obscure Realm. The ping on that snare is total BDM bliss as well as the plethora of pinch harmonics and machine gun double bass drumming. Snappy BDM is what Anthropophagus Depravity are all about, Dogma Weakened Souls keeps the pace going adding further riffs to the mix with touches of an underlying melody, yet still utterly chaotic. This band isn’t known for reinventing the wheel or anything but they’re exceptionally good at what they do. True Brutal Death if ever there was, and can I say, I just cannot believe this band has a real drummer, utterly ridiculous. There’s more riffage going on in Malicious Catastrophe as well as some degree of Slamming which is a welcome addition to the swirling torment. Giving off some pretty big cavernous energy is Obliterate The Sanctified, it reminds me a lot of Immolation, namely in the guitars. By the time I reach Preaching Above Depravity I’m quite aware that similarly to Apocalypto there isn’t going to be anything shockingly different from any other modern BDM album. That said I would say that the band appear to have musically matured with this release adding in the odd additional musical flare here and there.
There’s this sort of weird ambience that comes out of nowhere at the end of Preaching Above Depravity. It might seem a little out of place but it does allow the listener to breathe, I mean seriously those drums, I cannot emphasize enough the power within. Don’t worry though, before you know it all the madness is back in the album’s title track. Being pretty far removed from Black Metal I find it somewhat humorous that the next song is called When The Darkthrone Reigns. It’s basically just a big sample, but weirdly I’m kind of here for it, maybe my love of Ambient music has turned me into an enjoyer of pointless samples, who knows. Let’s get back to the barbarity though with Pseudo Salvation, yeah you guessed it, pretty much more of the same, but it’s so damn good I don’t even care. …Of Condemnation follows, some seriously huge riffs in this one, again very Immolation-like, it is an instrumental and perhaps feels a touch filler especially so close to the previous Ambient portions but I still like it. Finally we get Delusions Of The Unholy which serves as a fittingly brutal end to this quality record.
Okay so I can’t profess that this is the greatest Brutal Death record I’ve ever heard, but I did like it more than the debut and that made it into my top 20 albums of 2021. It’s just so damn solid, there’s always a fear with BDM these days that it’ll be tainted with Hardcore or Deathcore elements, so when I hear something like this I can’t help but be pleased. Yes, the addition of too much Ambience/ instrumentals in the second half is a bit of a blow, it would have worked better had these elements been more spread out but nonetheless I can’t really fault the actual Death Metal within. Finally a special shoutout to drummer Sahrul Ramadhan, this guy is going in my mental notebook of killer drummers.
(8/10 George Caley)
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