Well, Vengeance Evangel is the long-awaited third album after line-up shifts that lead to some of the band members splintering off, forming Black Hole Deity.  That band released the awesome debut Profane Geometry in 2024 and the music, quite honestly, sounds just like Chaos Inception.  A good thing, mind you.  Original Chaos Inception members Gary White – Drums and Matt Barnes Guitars welcome into the fold Garth Lovvorn – Bass and Jason Flippo – Vocals.  Well kind of sort of.  The two newer members may already be gone because this album has Gary doing the vocals and Kévin Paradis on drums.  So for now they seem to be a two-piece, with a side of fries.

Vengeance Evangel, from start to finish, to put it bluntly, is ferocious.  “Artillery of Humwawa” starts things off with monster blasting and slick and quick guitar solos in the beginning.  The Morbid Angel influences remain in place.  And the variety of weird guitar parts and squeals and pinch harmonics run rampant on this.  The blasting is so friggin’ tight, it will make chest cavities collapse all over town.  Crazy opening song.

“Falsificator” up next is no less chaotic.  Some very creative drum moments early on, then BOOM!!  Right into killer blasting and this tune has a plethora of tempo shifts.  The galloping, the blasts and some mid-paced moments.  Great guitar soloing over the blasts as well and some double pounding drum techniques towards the end.  Soooo I was running on the treadmill recently and I noticed I was running faster than normal, and I was listening to this album.

The title track is a slow meandering start.  Something you will need due to the relentless nature of this beast of an album.  The mid-paced double bass is great, then right into the blasting.  The song slows down the speed, but we wind up getting this start and stop on a dime types of quick blasts, then back into the mid-paced heaviness.  This is dizzying to the nth degree, however it works.  These moments are abrupt and will not give a chance to catch your breath.

“Empire of Prevarication” starts out as a tech-death metal song with massive guitar soloing over the blasts.  Then the blasting really takes center stage.  I like how the song slows down a bit and I find the vocal arrangements to fit really well.  Enunciated and punctuated nicely.  Then right into more blasting.  There’s more solos, blasting, excerpts of a woman screaming..all right here folks!

Vengeance Evangel is the best album Chaos Inception has released.  The band name always went well with the music and this album is even more lethal and chaotic than past efforts.  Believe it or not, there is a fair share of melodies on this album, however, for the majority of this album, this is high velocity brutal old school Morbid Angel type of madness.  Welcome back to the fold Chaos Inception.  What a ripper!

Cambion consists of two ex Reign of Terror chaps,  “R.O” (bass/vocals) and “T.R” (guitar/vocals), and drummer Cheston Westmoreland, more known for his work in more tech-death bands like Burning The Masses, Equipoise, and such, but also Hate Eternal. And while this has a clinical, tech-death tone and production, the 38-minute whirlwind is a nasty tornado or razor-sharp, unforgiving blackened death nastiness.

There isn’t much more to say really. If you like Angecorpse or Abhomine, this is a no-brainer for you. It sneers, snaps, and snarls like a pissed-off mob of bath-salt eating wolverines, but they have guitars, bass, a mic, and drums. From the immediate throttle of the title track through “Vae Victus”, vicious “Cambion”, “Impact Steel”, “Eiton Euclarion” and “Fatalism”, there is little refrain from the assault, other than a few slower militant marches here and there.

That said, 9 minute closer “Obscuratio” sarts with a few minutes of ambient atmospherics, and then delivers an lengthy, instrumental bookend to the album, that even has a solo, that shows, they can take slow down the sonic throat fucking ever so slightly if they choose.

“Abject”, “Hell hunger” and “No Sides” are among my favorite tracks on this.  The album moves a long quite quickly with tracks generally around 3 to 5 minutes.  The flow of the album is fine.   35 minutes is a perfect length for a death metal record. The metal portions of the album our great.  What kills me about this album are the spoken word parts.  This is such a grey area for many acts but for this release I feel like the album would have been even better without them.   There are releases out there that have similar parts that artists might be able to get away with (Nile’s Vile Narcotic Rites).  For my money I can do without.  Particularly with the closing track “Insane Prayer”.

There is a lot to like about this debut. Being that this group has been around since 2017 I am sure this two man duo put a lot of time into these arrangements.  I do look forward to future releases from Ad Vitam Infernal. If they can find a legit drummer to play these tracks that would definitely add to their dynamic.   Totally worth checking out.  Lavadome productions have some killer releases coming out this year (Black Hole Deity, Maere, Tsun Tzu).   Bookmark their website and pre-order all of their stuff.

In the grand tradition of country mates Portal, Ignivomous, Golgothan Remains and Miserist as well as Dodecahedron, Altarage, Mitochondrion, Corpsessed, Ulcerate, and Nightmarer, Eskhaton is a down tuned, slithering, discordant slurry of noise that rarely coheres into anything remotely structured. The 14 song (some are atmospheric interludes), 52 minute descent into madness is a exercise in depraved, slimy dissonance that’s as unsettling as it is chaotic.

With song titles like “Relic of Mictlantecuhtli”, “Culthulhunatic”, “Blasphemartyr”, “Elu Azag” and “Kimah Kalu Ultu Ulla”, the oozing, crawling Lovecraftian, occult stench is rife, but don’t come here looking for standout riffs or moments to recall, as the album just careens, squeals and growls from the abyss with a sickly, deviant guitar tone and nightmarish howls and growls that are palpably nauseating. While the majority of the material is the careening, indecipherable blasts, a few lumbering, monstrous crawls break up the chaos such as “Abyss  Unknown” or “Subvoidal”, which further cement the album’s foul miasma.

There’s been some fine murky death metal this year from the likes of Nightmarer, Tatanhammer, Eroded, Burial Invocation and such and even with the upcoming monster from Corpsessed, Omegalitheos stands as arguably the murkiest of 2018s death metal releases and yet another example of quality over quantity for Lavadome productions.

There’s not much else to say really, Execration Diatribes is a solid no frill affair that needs little fluff to review. The production is a perfect balance of sharpness and a old school clarity of thrash, which also has a little bit of an influence here as much of the early 9os death metal did. This influence becomes  even more obvious for the many wailing leads that litter the songs (i.e. “Nothing Remains”). The blast beat are aplenty, but they are never into more broodle realms, just a solid, raw savagery as heard on the likes of  “Confront Death” and “Riding the Storms of Hate MMXVI” (both with more wailing lead work).

Of note, the vocals of Pedro Silva have a nice clear cadence and delivery that’s part black metal, part thrash, but also keeps the release more in thrash rather than pure death metal realms. It’s a nice break from gurgling or inhaled vocals.

That all said, it’s not a release I’m coming back to or  band I’ll be actively seeking out. Still, this is the kind of old school death/thrash metal that would have been perfect for Dark Descent’s Unspeakable Axe subdivision, not quite full on grizzled death metal, not quite thrash, but a well executed mix of both.

In the case of Epoch and their debut re-release, this beast, known as Sacrosanct, is dripping with the influences by the likes of Dead Congregation, Morbid Angel, Aosoth, Incantation, Arkhon Infaustus, and Lvcyfyre, but the most prevalent would be a base splicing of  Immolation and  Hate Eternal. All eight tracks on Sacrosanct rage in that good ‘ol U. S. of A. stylized death metal; twisting and turning with enough intricacies and subtle tech flairs and atmospheric shifts to keep the material moving and engaging, only getting better and more memorable with each listen.

From the dissonant, angular riffing and obtuse melodies of “Altered States”, to the all out fury of “Ichneumon”, “To Datechon, ho Katechon”, and “Absolute Vision”, or “Fear Ritual”, with its nice use of a-typical guitar play within the beatdown of blasts, fat grooves, and dissonant chords, Sacrosanct is a feral and rabid monster of death metal heft. If truth be told, my only actual complaints with Sacrosanct is the absence of any true guitar leads/solos and the tendency  for the drums to be a tad too blast driven, `a la Hate Eternal. The blasts are just a very minor gripe, but as for the leads, if the band were to inject some truly good and fitting solos into these tracks, then step back! For that would be akin to giving this savage creation a pair of adamantium claws.

Easily able to stand toe-to-toe in Primal Rage battle with today’s death metal elites, Sacrosanct is an album worth hearing and Epoch, a band worth taking note of and keeping tabs on.

“Saturn Rising” is a stage-setting instrumental where the howl of gusting, plain-kicking wind is accompanied by piercing thrusts of drone guitar feedback.  On first listen you might think you’re delving into the old underbelly of the Southern Lord roster, yet first impressions are as deceiving as they come.  It’s in the backwards-tumbling, doom-inflected opening riff of “Awakening Confessiones” that the real power of Dominhate reveals itself in full.  Soon Slippy’s double-bass patterns and scattershot blastbeasts combine in unholy orgy with the detuned, quick-cutting riffage of Alex and Jesus’ Earthy, moldy guitar gutwrench.  Deicide and Suffocation fans should find what they’re looking for here with a righteous combination of anthemic riff-work running ramshackle over mangled blood oaths where technicality holds the same weight as sheer lightspeed headfuck.  Steve’s thick, puking growls are placed sternly in the mix throughout and whenever the song dissipates into feedback his grumbling bass line leads the band into a skin-peeling, sludge tremor that’s heavy in the grand tradition of Incantation and Putrevore.  Alex places a soaring lead over top of the ground level violence which gives the music is a killer, desolate atmosphere that’s smashed to pieces thanks to some of the vilest death metal this side of this shit-covered planet.

There’s no downward lunge or black hole riff to be found in the opening of “Faith Delirius Imago,” no sir, you can fuck off with your wanton lust of creepy crawly sleaze as the quartet catapults themselves into the immolating rape of blasts beats, twin riff collisions with no slowdown and goddamn rapturous vocals.  Sometimes a sickening, semi mid-tempo chord display will unfold some catchier elements but mostly this thing careens along faster than the Roadrunner on crack with solo snippets so fast you’ll need a quick earhole to catch ‘em proper.  2:20 harnesses an old school, detuned DM bowel churner where a defecating groove finally provides some respite and a point to bang your head at a discernible speed.  It’s in these moments where Dominhate truly excel and rise into a truly special band for me.

There are about a 1,000 DM bands that wish they could capture that sexually harassing, doom molestation that these guys bottle up in their riffs and ragged rhythm evacuations.  “Immolation Carmen Astri” allows a hungover, stumbling doom riff to introduce the proceedings while the double-bass quickly heightens the tension as the guitar work hoists triumphant, hard-boiled power chord climbs.  It’s such a fucking unnerving riff that you’ll have hardly have time to plant your feet and brace yourself for the baby bashing death metal rampage to follow.  Rounding things out, “Creation Quies Monumenti” weighs heavily on dense riff grinds wallowing in doom n’ gloom while spaced-out, atmospheric pacing gives the band plenty of time to make each passage yield a lasting impression.  For my money there just isn’t enough death metal like this and if I’m missing out on some key bands, please fuckin’ tell me.  Dominhate’s range between kill yo mama blast-o-rama, smugly unforgiving slime sludge and heady tempo breaks is second to none on this track.

Emissaries of Morning’s only fault is that it’s too damn short and leaves you wanting more…but maybe that’s the testament of one helluva band.  I could have swallowed a whole album of this stuff with a ravenous appetite, but then again, I can go back and check out Towards the Light for more of these maniacs unapologetic, unfuckwithable take on locked in death metal’s sonic seethe.  I can’t see any fans of old school and just generally fuckin’ good DM being displeased with this.

“Arc of Eradication” opens up this 8 song, over 50 minute album, and has some cool weird opening guitar riffing and it’s evident that the Demilich influences are still there.  Some very cool drumming and the guitar solo at the 2 minute part is pushed up quite a bit higher in the mix, a little too much, which makes the sound a tad uneven.  But the blasting and off kilter beats and Roman’s growls and Pat’s backing barks are gelling really well at this point.  Aodan Collins is listed as the session bassist and towards the end you can really hear this youngster’s bass plucking, coming through nicely.

“Yliaster” is another nicely done death metal song with well-done guitar melodies and bass strumming, that reminded me of Obscura, the band not the Gorguts album.  I am finding myself, by this point, similar to The Charnal Expanse how Zealotry are not for everyone, especially since rather than play in a fine line, they incorporate a lot of various elements.  They’re non-linear, poly-rhythmic dissonant sound can be a tough listen, for some.  The guitar solo at the 2:50 part is neat and then the slow groove section is just not typical sounding death metal.  It’s the kind of music that if you are a big fan of bands like Meshuggah, Ulcerate, Gigan, Demilich…. you understand these are not bands that instantaneously captures the average listener’s ears.  For me this thinking type of brutality is awe inspiring.  It forces the listener to pay attention to the dissonance and the originality and for that Zealotry are pretty goddamn original.

The title track, at over 8 minutes, begins in a Gorguts fashion with some outstanding bass guitar work, before going into a narrative vocal performance as if the performance is being spoken underwater. Listen to this beginning section on headphones.  It is wack a doo!!  But in a good way.  The song meanders along in a very similar path to the Gorguts song, “Clouded”.  Some drone going on, and the song is layered with thick heaviness, some quick blasting underneath the foggy heaviness and dastardly creepy crawly eeriness.

The Last Witness has a similar production, to that of the debut.  Organic, original, not over produced; however The Last Witness has cleared up some of the muddy production that plagued The Charnal Expanse.  With that being said, the instrumentation bites through a helluva lot more on this and with that and stronger songwriting, The Last Witness is a huge step forward.  I am truly digging this album and did not think it would impact me as much as it did.  Probably since I’m a huge fan of the bands that I also mentioned in this review is why I enjoy this album so much.  Zealotry has, thus far, released the most original sounding death metal album for 2016, alongside a pretty cool album cover.  Kick ass from start to finish!!

“Key to Timeless Laws” is the perfect example.  Mind bending chords and very catchy and some crazy guitar effects, like a violin at the 4 minute mark.  It’s like crazy music.  The rumbling double bass never letting up and the songs goes from madness, to blasting to atmospheric to pure unadulterated brutality.  Oh my sweet baby jesus, this tune rules.  “The Black Veil of Original Flaw” begins calm then gets into the mad brutality then back into the atmosphere and then into the syncopated beats.  And Ad Nauseam does this, while still being original and creating memorable songs.  This type of avant garde, technical death metal, for me is the hardest type of music for a band to make catchy.  But hell, these Italians know what the F they are doing!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiaXNVm5YF0

I can go on all day, but what’s the point?  This is the best tech brutal death metal album for 2015.  The pen drawn album cover is astonishing.  Holy crap, incredible layout.  People, folks of all ages-if you do not have Nihil Quam Vacuitas Ordinatum in your collection, but like the bands I mentioned above, then what the hell are you waiting for???  Buy or Die!!!!!!!

It’s been 4 years since Dark Future, but little has changed. The line up has been present for all four albums and it shows in the band’s consistency. The no nonsense 33 minutes and 8 concise, no frills songs all deliver muddy, atonal, churning riffs and deep growls that will make any death metal aficionado smile (or grimace).

The production seems a little fuller and bigger than Dark Future, with the vocals a bit more up front, even if they are strictly monotone ( with a few high pitched screams arise here and there). There’s ample amount of pinch harmonic blasting, plenty of instantly recognizable backward styled Immolation riffage, (“Burning Divine Domination”) a few echo-y spacey Morbid Angel style solos (“Defleshed Skeleton”), and my favorites, some nice slower grinds as heard on “Suffering Redemption” or kickass march of “Sinful Omens”. And as you can tell by the song titles, this is pure old school fire and brimstone stuff, nothing progressive or experimental here.

All that being said, the debut from country and label mates Heaving Earth might just bump Destroying Divinity off the pedestal of the Czech Republic’s top Immolation clone, but 1B isn’t bad at all.

It appears that Heaving Earth has released 2015s first great death metal record, as the mix of crumbling, pinch harmonic squeals and lurches  and slightly more clinical tech death metal furor combines perfectly. The overall production mirrors the musical balance also, with clear riffs and other worldy Mithras-ian solos with the murky muddy tones fully present for when the band enters a more cavernous crawl.

Look no further than opener “The Final Crowning” to hear a succinct view into the album’s entirety, as the attention grabbing track as the recognizable old school influences are injected with busy, cleverly technical shreddage. And not new tech death noodly shreddage, just a razor sharp layer of higher register riffs, over the riffs. And it’s magical.

The rest of the album follows suite with either a similar salvo (“Nailed to Perpetual Anguish”, “Doomed Before Inception”, fucking blistering “Forging Arcane Heresy”) or more stripped down, brutal or churning  Immolation-y-ness (“”Worms of Rusted Congregation”, “Depths of Abomination”, “I am Nothing”-with its  unmistakable closing Immolation lurch) that heave and careen with heft, gusto, skill and satisfying intensity. The entire album delivers top notch material from start to the excellent finish of 8 minute monster “Jesus Died”( not including the outro), with no filler at all.

It’s no surprise at the quality of this release considering two of member also serve in one of The Czech Republic’s other fine death metal bands, and former labelmates Brutally Deceased (vocalist Michal Štěpánek and guitarist Tomáš Halama) so you know these guys do old school well enough, but the crafty mix of obvious influences with an energizing modern gloss make this release one of 2015s early best death metal releases, and a new beacon og quality for the Czech Death metal scene and Lavadome Productions.

Like Ablaze, Perversity‘s sound is rooted in Polish death metal but has a little off kilter, left field sense of structure. Imagine a ‘weirder’ Vader or as I mentioned in my review of Ablaze, Yattering. It’s a competent mix of technical death metal and a old school primitiveness, that’s sold but hardly a must have record, especially as a mere 17 minute EP.

But it still gets Lavadome’s juices flowing for the upcoming year with 5 songs and one outro. The songs lurch and rumble with ample heft and twangy complexity and there’s even a surprising orchestral flourish to end the second track “Angel of Prostitution” to break up the burly, staggering riffs, throbbing bass lines and gruff vocals contained in the “Goddess of Maggots”, “Vermin” and “Incest of Flesh”, all delivered with a nice punchy, but primal production. Penultimate track “The Accuser” has a more controlled lurch and pace with a Morbid Angel like crawl which is promising before the nice little orchestral outro closes the solid little EP out.

Firmly rooted is blistering Floridian death metal (not surprising considering guitarist Matt Barnes currently serves in Monstrosity) rendered with an almost Angelcorpse-ish relentless  and churning and discordant touch, Chaos Inception is  heavily inspired by the likes of classic Morbid Angel, Deicide and to these ears, a stripped down Nile without the sand in your ass ( that’s without the Middle eastern elements for those who missed my attempt at humor).

At a brisk but effective 30 minutes, The Abrogation wastes little time or energy with anything but a vortex of blistering blasts and swirling atonal solos. The production is pummeling, (no Tupperware drums here)  yet clean and the vocals of Chris White shift between higher register blackened shreiks and a Dallas Tyler Wode-ish bellow.  And while the bass, as with much of the classic Floridan death metal is in the back ground, the guitars are sharp and amid the searing speed and precision add a few surprising melodic moments here and there as evidenced to start and end  “Hammer of Infidel” and “Pazuzu Eternal”   where attention grabbing, if short lived melodic riffs let you know Chaos Inception are just a little more than face blasting.

That being said, face blasting is the primary focus and the Nile comparison comes on hard and fast during the bands speedier moments, chaotic solos as well as the few molten slow downs. “Lunatic Necromancy”, the title track  and the start of “Scald Command” have  some of the stronger Nile vibes, while a lot of the other material give me a bit of a Lecherous Nocturne aura. The band occasionally settle into a short lived militant march as heard on “The Exterminati”, “Black Blood Vortex”, “Ancient Ways Prevail” and “Phalanx (Tip of the Spear)” but they are a little underutilized only surfacing a few times and are pretty brief; I would have loved to have heard a monster 5 minute slow burner from these guys.

Good stuff. Great cover art too.

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.

Swedish death metal aficionados will instantly recognize the band’s moniker as a track from Grave‘s 1992 album, You’ll Never See and that in itself will give you a blatant point of reference for the nine song, 33-minute album: Grave. Notably early Into the Grave and You’ll Never See Grave with a hint of Nihilist; raw, with a super down tuned sunlight buzz, an emphasis on more simple blasting riffs and grooves and some very deep, gruff vocals.

The Davos studios production is spot on in capturing the sound of yore. It’s not overly done or forced, but a primal and authentic analog sound that’s incredibly nostalgic. The same goes for the songwriting. The quartet obviously knows the reference material inside and out plying their trade with a simple energy and effective sense of balance between groove and cavernous blasting. And while I’ll readily admit that none of the tracks simply blew me away like Entrails or Morbider, there’s a consistent satisfaction from start to finish.

However, I did enjoy some of the album’s slightly longer more varied tracks like “Blissful Desecration”, “…And Here I Die Forsaken” (yet another Grave nod?), “The Demise of the Human Swine”, as opposed to the (still enjoyable) pure, shorter, pummeling Into the Grave rumbles of “Lustful Sodomy in the House of God”, “Dead Lovers’ Guide”, “A Life Once Aborted” and “All That Rots and Withers”.

As if to cement the band’s influences, the album ends with a cover of one of the most instantly recognizable tracks of the genre, but it’s not a Grave track. Instead, it’s Dismember’s “Override of the Overture” and for fans of the genre, it’s pretty boner inducing even if the original track is as perfect as a track can be. Brutally Deceased’s more down-tuned and urgent take on the song does it justice and make Brutally Deceased an instant big timer player in the genre’s sudden resurgence.