Upon the Altar hails from Tarnów, Lesser Poland and has been honing its swords since 2020 when they released their Demo and then they released their debut Absid ab Ordine Luminis in 2021. Descendants of Evil is a gross album, it’s grimy and filthy and leaves a smell of graveyard soil and decaying flesh in the air after it’s over… I fucking love it!  These three lads have taken Black Metal and Death Metal and put them in a vat of acid.

The first track “Baneful Benediction” hits you right in the guts. It rips with Blackened Thrash fury, and it’s forceful riffing against the blitzkrieg of the drums is just awe-inspiring. I could just say that this is Teitanblood worship and call it a day, but this album is so much more than that. It’s black, hate-filled heart beats with the pulse of the damned.

“Horror Vacui” has a Deathspell Omega taste to it, it’s perfectly vile and Bassist/ Vocalist Void delivers the lyrics with vicious malice, the discordant guitars cutting through like razors. This effect continues with “Jaldabaoth’s Breath” bringing some ominous Incantation vibes just for more unholy provocations.

That’s a huge favorite thing about this album. It has a Black Metal armor, but underneath boils a cauldron of Death Metal fury. “Unholy Follows” has that little bit of Death Metal ambience to it. It’s a thundering track, unrelenting blast beats and some off the fucking rails solos. Descendants of Evil is a crushing album, there’s “Malicious Holiness” with it’s go for the throat brutality against the whirlwind of evil elation that controls the song.

“Annunciation” is a haunting, malevolent track. It boils with an elemental destructive power; fast and furious raging toward the eradication of Christendom. “Descendants of Evil” doesn’t let up at all, it being an indomitable declaration and the title track. And a pure blacker than the blackest Metal ever created album closes with “Prolegomenon” a 1:58 dirge that coalesces the whole album and it’s a fantastic closing track to this utterly desolate yet captivating album.

Descendants of Evil is a rip ride, a triumphant Black Metal album that has a soul of bleeding malicious intent. I cannot trumpet the awesome powers contained in the eight tracks. If you like Teitanblood, Deathspell Omega and Ruins of Beverast this is right up your tree. Get it now!

Morgue took a break in the early oos, after The Process to Define the Shape of Self-Loathing, but has been active since 2016, releasing 2 albums, which I have not heard. But honestly, I doubt there is much in their discography that could top the complete and utter pummeling of The Process to….. At the time it was literally one of the most punishing grindcore/death metal albums I had heard, and to this day remains up there with Anaal Nathrakh‘s The Codex Necro or Nasum’s early work as one of the most vitriolic albums I have ever heard,  22 years later. The only thing that has come close was Hate Manifesto‘s ΑΠΟΣΤΑΤΗΣ  back in 2023.

So when the promo for Close to Complete Darkness dropped, I wanted to see if the band was still capable of such a racket all these years later and the answer is .. yes.

Though age has tempered many of us and slowed us down, the same can’t be said for Morgue (again, I can’t compare this album to the last 2, just the debut). For most of the album’s 33-minute run time, they do deliver close to the same levels of savagery, but they also have learned some control and pacing amid the vortex of savagery as the 33 minutes that comprise the album have more slower, reigned-in, churning moments than I recalled with The Process to……

Early on, there is some sheer, face-ripping stuff that recalls The Process….such as the openers “Upon the Altar” (complete with orchestral intro),  “Doorways in Crimson Red” and “Blemish”. Then there are tracks like”Sacrificial Blood” and “Disobedience”, “Towards Complete Darkness” and closer “Speculative Fall of the Human Race” which add just a little more moody menace to the fucking blistering salvo.

Much like any release in this unrelenting style, this isn’t a pick-a-song-and-repeat type affair. You sit down, strap in, and take the fucking beating like a fucking man, spit out your teeth, wipe your mouth and move on.

With a little more shrill, slicing tone and focus of frosty, tremolo picked melodies, As Rats Devour Lions is 10 tracks of blackened fury that rarely lets up. The 8 songs have no filler or interludes or atmospherics, but occasionally dip one steel clad boot into black thrash sneer here and there (“Janicari”, “Hamasta Death Ritual”).

A couple of the better tracks from the Contempt EP show up (“Serpents in the House of Ra”, “Dar El Harb”), so unfortunately this isn’t all new material, but the new ones such as closer “Oedipus Context” with its sly, bristling melody line, show a nice melodic development.  But the guys can simply rip faces to on tracks like “Idealogue Alchemy”  and “Plagiarized Infamy”. Đorđević  has a perfect shriek and occasional growl and Hauppa’s bass seems a little more prominent than the EP along with an overall more crisp and sharp production, making for a ripping little debut album from a  band that should start making noise in the USBM scene with continued improvement.

With Pseudonyms like “Horrible Person”, “Drug Pervert Deathhammer”, “Infernal Scumbag” and “CHUD Overlord”, and song titles like “Misanthrope Absolute”, “Taste The Fucking Poison” and “Torched of War and Retribution”, you know what you are in for. Early Incantation, mixed with defunct US act Sanguis Imperem jumped to mind as well as a host of bestial Hell’s Headbangers acts.

Armed with  filthy guitar tone and even filthier vocals (some times bordering on grindcore gurgle), the 10 song 36 minute affair rarely lets up except for a miasmal Incantation-y crawl here and there. It’s a nasty, grimy affair, but back up that grime with killer riffs as heard on “Iron Justice”, crawling “Rats (This World is a Sewer)”, putridly regal favorite “Death March Insanity” and “Torched of War and Retribution” and some of those aforementioned sickly crawls (i.e start of  “Taste the Fucking Poison”, “part of “Denier of the Root”, end of closer “There Will be No Law”), though I wish there were more.

Hell’s Headbangers missed one here… and a great score for Poland’s Godz of War as this is a killer release of bestial metal, but has some song writing chops as well as pure nihilistic filth. Will definitely be keeping an eye on these guys and future releases.

Mid range, buzzing chainsaw guitars? Check. Gruff vocals? Check? Full on Entombed/Dismember/Grave worship? Double check. And while everything is done right on the album, whether it’s my recent exposure to so many albums in the style (Rotten Casket, Evoked,  Fatalist, Nocturnal Hollow, Brutally Deceased, Decomposed, Demonbreed, Ashcloud) or Eteritus‘ lack of truly standout songs, the album isn’t exciting me as one of this genre usually would.There is nothing wrong with the album at all. The aptly named, 32 minute, 9 song affair has everything a fan of classic Swededeath would want, and its delivered with energy and a sport on production. The songs are a good mix of burly, trundling, paced bruisers like “Biocentric” and  “End of Line” and the more classic Stockholm canter/trot like  “Hellish Imagery” and “Eye of the Storm” and a little of both “(The Unliving Thing”, ‘Somber Mind”). But none of it sticks. Even for a super fan like me, there’s isn’t  a song or riff on the album I can hang my hat on, recall or want to go back to.

Closer  “Mortal Prophecy” delivers a little redemption about half way through with a solid little romp, but in all it’s still an album I’m not overly enamored with. There’s simply to much other, better albums of the style  that came out recently or are due out soon.

After some unsettling sounds of watery torture, their patented wall of sound hits at full force. But, something is a little different this time around. It sounds a bit more human, as if the machines that created the last album have begun to emulate their extinct creators. The shift isn’t as drastic as the one that Godflesh made on Hymns, but it’s noticeable, and aided by the production. It sounds as if a green slime has formed on all of the machinery in their abandoned factory since the first album. This is neither good nor bad, just different. However, it definitely is a positive to hear more variety within and between the songs. The pinnacle of their efforts is “Chapter VII” as it builds from a throbbing, stomping dirge to warp-speed grinding with moments of stop/start bursts and distant ambience. The only downside with the increased variety is the inclusion of a few ambient/industrial tracks that do little more than offer some respite from their usual onslaught.

The theme this time is totalitarianism. Seemingly in the spirit of that political system, three band members have been eliminated, leaving just Loïc.F and vocalist David Bailey. So, no more dual vocalists, but David Bailey does more than a fine enough job by himself with his commanding vocals sounding like David Vincent channeled through a Fallout 4 sentry bot. No one is credited for drums, so I can only assume that they were programmed, which is kind of ironic considering the more natural feel of the album. If they really weren’t performed by a human, Loïc.F did a damn good job making them sound like they were.

If you’re someone who needs riffs and memorability in their metal, you should probably still steer clear of these guys because, even with the changes that they’ve made, there’s still not really any of those things here. But, if you dwell in metal’s most extreme fringes, this is your new authority. Submit!