This tasty little Italian brutal death EP comes to us from two members of Vomit the Soul, Beheaded, Antropofagus, Septycal Gorge, and Putridity. To be honest, I had only heard Antropofagus before checking out this EP, but given that this has been a steady player for me all month, I will have to look into the others.

Chasm of No Return isn’t just groovy and brutal and vaguely hypnotic – like all good brutal death or slam – it also grabs your attention right away with a series of blackened melodies that carve through opening track “Metamorphic Oblivion.” The burbling vocals – so guttural that they might as well be called borborygmic (go look it up) – and relentless, churning rhythm section keep the track moving, but it’s these sinister melodies (shades of Belphegor or Behemoth) that make it really entertaining. The follow-up tracks trade some of that melody and menace for a cold, technical, Decapitated-like sheen. They’re a bit choppier, and there are frequent change-ups in both, but they’re never too showy, and the tracks never devolve into noodly chaos.

If these guys decide to do a full-length – and I hope they do – I’d love to hear more compositions like the opener. It had a near-perfect blend of technicality, groove, melody and brutality. Far more engaging than most of the polysyllabic, largely amelodic brutal/slam acts out there (Cephalotripsy, Abominable Putridity, Guttural Engorgement, take your pick).

Perhaps it’s the band name and cover art, but I imagined malevolent aliens strapping down their abducted human prey and playing this album to torture or bewilder them – but to those of us that like this sort of thing, it would just flow past like a gentle stream. A stream of foamy, pus-flecked and alien-contaminated blood, of course, but a gentle stream nonetheless.

[Visit the band's website]

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