Apart from the band’s debut this Polish act love their long album titles even though their albums are relatively short as this fourth clocks in the sub 30 minute mark and begins with an eerie almost sinister riff on “Walls Of Askalon” that has an emboldened blackened feel. Noticeably the sound is stripped bare but not the point that it listens like monophonic black metal preferring to have an organic sound especially on the drums which are mixed high alongside the guitar leads. The music is predominantly death metal but at times the songs veer into an obsidian aura that enables each track to bear a far more menacing side particularly on “Putrescent Remains” with its ghoulish and nightmarish screeches. The half blasted snare work sounds clamorous creating a chaotic feel tempered by the excellent guitar hook. The cliff dropping pace changes enhance the dramatic effects with power and intensity, but it’s the excellent hooks I like best on the album along with the grisly bone brittling riffs that spear every song.

“Niemy Krzyk Zaglady” has that skin crawling creepiness ingrained into its melody perpetuated by its slower pace when the riffing drills in focus. The escalation in tension is excellent, especially when it breaks for brief bass runs that hint at a foreboding change that appears with an avalanche of double bass and subsequent blast beat. The bands ability to write songs that run the gamut of all out savagery and plunging abyssal terror is punishing and it is this slower side I particularly like best as it is far more terrifying and enthralling as on “Martwa Ziemia” and just when you think the song is about terminate it rears up and strikes with a cascade of drums and demonic vocalising.

Closing the album of the bands own songs is “Karma Slayer” a two minute detonation that has some similarities to Krisiun and I did wonder why it was at the end of the album as I felt it was weaker than some of the other songs though it is no less frenetic or demented but a tad less ambitious. Like the previous album the band has opted for a cover to end the album and this time they’ve gone for Immortal’s “Blashyrkh”. I’ve listened to it a few times and I am not convinced their rendition works with the way they’ve interpreted it. Musically it sticks to the structure of course but sound wise it has been speeded up and has a far more grating rawer style which some will cast aspersions on. However it is the bands own music that should be the focus and with that in mind this album is definitely worth tracking down and giving a shot as it contains tracks of pristine nihilistic auditory violence.

(8/10 Martin Harris)

https://www.facebook.com/kingdomtempleofdeath

https://godzovwarproductions.bandcamp.com/album/putrescent-remains-of-the-dead-ground