Review of Perversity - Ablaze

After the awesome old school Grave worship of Lavadome’s first release, Brutally Deceased‘s Dead Lovers Guide, I was excited to see yet another Lavadome release in my mail box, this time from Perversity, a relatively long running Slovakian death metal band. And while I was a little disappointed that this wasn’t more old school Swedish styled death metal, Perversity are a pretty competent and slightly off kilter brutal death metal act.

While not going to set the world on fire with album number 4, Ablaze, the band’s balance of technical death metal and brutal death metal is solid. The overall hue reminds me a little of some of the Polish death metal acts like Yattering, Trauma, Lost Soul and such, mixed with a rougher version of techy Pestilence; stuttering, staggering death metal that rarely settles in one spot and is delivered with a choppy, if still brutal style that makes for an unpredictable listen. The production is a bit dry, and the vocals are pretty mundane, but both fit the style and delivery of Perversity‘s somewhat hard to define sound.

After the intro, “Behind the Diabolical” pretty wells sets the tone for the rest of the album; skronky jazz bass line, lurching riff and loping staggering grooves. Most of the tracks follow that template for the most part with ample tracks that focus on either one or the other  but for the most the focus is on tracks that aptly mix both or mix both (“Devoted to Perdition”, “Merciless Messiah”, “The Banished”, “Blood of Hastur”). And the members themselves can handle their instruments making the CD confident it slightly scattershot.

Some hokey keys arise rarely (the  intro “Reach to Hell”, “Necrophiliac Beast”) and there’s a relatively useless instrumental track (“Vzplanutie”) but nothing that derails the album completely from being a pretty solid death metal release that despite being close to being a bit awkward at times,  has a surprising amount of character.