Barbarous is a new death metal band out of California. They released a two-song EP last year, Coup de Grâce, as a precursor to their debut album, and both those songs reappear on this album – Initium Mors.

Eight songs in 29 minutes and all encapsulated in a fun album cover equipped with a neat graveyard scene. The band wastes no time at all and opens with “Injection of the Exhumed”, one of the songs from last year’s EP. The song goes right into a blast beat, and Travis LaBerge has a nice throaty set of pipes. This fella plays instruments in other bands such as Cerebral Incubation and Splattered, but here he just lends his pipes. The 1.50 section has a very nice swaying groove moment that goes right into a mid-paced heavy moment, and Travis lets out a real nice growl. I appreciate death metal vocalists still doing growls. The ugly one at the 2.48, to signal the oncoming blast beat, is most excellent. Travis Zupo can blast with the best of them and the drums do not sound overly processed, maintaining an organic quality to them, which is awesome.

“By Lead or Steel” opens with a nice guitar riff, then right into the blasting, before the song gets into a severe headbanging gallop. Zach Weed and Thomas Belfiore write some nice guitar riffs. Zach Jakes lends the bass guitar duties to the recording. Hey, what’s with 3 guys in the band with their names beginning with a T and two with the letter Z, with multiple band members with the same first name? I’m sure they have nicknames for one another when rehearsing and such, ‘cause it’s bound to get confusing. “The Tomb Spawn” is the other EP song, redone here, and it has a great opening, and when Travis lets out that disgusting growl, then right into the groove, again, pretty sweet. He’s actually fairly understandable with his deep vocals. There is a nice guitar solo at the 2-minute mark that works itself into the blast beat, too. There is one thing, though, there are a lot of lyrics being sung. It’s cool, but there are lots of vocals on this, and at times, I think maybe pulling back on some of the lyrics but making them catchier would make this band stand out a little more. Maybe add another vocal tone in the mix, too. Just my 2 wooden nickels of advice.

“Conscious Decomposition” has a plethora of blast beats, and a bunch of them are reminiscent of early Suffocation; therefore, that’s a home run in my book. The soloing over the 2.30 timestamp is an interesting beat, and the isolated vocal moments after that, then right into the heavy double bass groove, is terrific.

“Coup de grâce” ends the album, and erupting right into the gallop is clever. Some very cool growls, early on too. There are plenty of Slayer-inspired guitar solos towards the end of the song. The song also gets faster and faster, and the ending is pretty brutal.

Initium Mors is a fun debut from newcomers Barbarous. You saw the above-mentioned items I spoke about regarding some improvements the band could look into in order to set themselves apart from the death metal pack. There are a lot of early Suffocation worship parts on this. Those influences are more with the drum patterns. The production is very good. This production has more of an organic sound to it; therefore, it sounds warmer and not clinical. Overall, this is good ‘old-fashioned meat and potatoes American death metal.

[Visit the band's website]

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