The band is made up of only 2 members: Dimon’s Night doing all the instruments and Kydoimos growling and writing the brutal lyrics.  The title track “Against Your Filthy Kind” bursts forward with a clip of a shotgun blast and then right into the monster double bass.  It’s punishing and the guitars are very heavy.  There is some nice audible bass guitar and then gets into a cool blast beat – it’s more old-school like a real fast death/thrash speed, circa 1987, rather than going full throttle blast beat.  The pace returns to the mid-paced rumbling heaviness.  The section has a bit of a Bolt Thrower feel and on their debut album they covered “The IVth Crusade” from Bolt Thrower – so there is the tie in.  Then the song gets slower and then back into the old school fast speed. The vocalist reminds me of Chris Barnes from the debut Cannibal Corpse album, Eaten Back to Life and vintage Bolt Thrower.

“All Hail the Slaughter of the Whore” is an awesome song title.  Nice opening isolated guitar riff, going right into the mid-paced rumbling heaviness.  Excellent guitar riffing where the riffs are allowed to breathe, thus making them that much more impactful.  The riffing really hits home.  If and when live shows return this song has to be in their live set.  The pit during these rumbling heavy moments would no doubt cause a violent swelling circle pit bent on causing sinkholes to then allow the band to perform in said sinkhole.  The song picks up some speed, but then gets right into the mid-paced part.

“The Devil in Your Personal Hell” is next opening with a spoken word clip and the song is slower in nature with a melodic guitar solo and then right into a nice jumpy moment having a bit of a Swedish dm flair to it and then into the rumbling heaviness.  Nice build-up at the 1.55 part and then right into a part you will want to be slam-dancing all damn day.  The jumpiness returns and the stop n go guitar riffing and drum patterns is super cool.  The second tracked guitar has the melodic edge to it which is nicely placed.  The song is bludgingly heavy and its main focus is to cause the toppling of buildings in your neighborhood.

Misanthropy Apotheosis’s Against Your Filthy Kind 3-song ep is a lot of fun.  I think the drumming, and I apologize if I am incorrect, is actually a drum machine.  It has that mechanical sound and really there are no drum rolls, it’s all very simple patterns.  They work well with the songs though and for the brand of death metal being played here.  This is prime 90’s inspired death metal with smatterings of American/European/Swedish styles.  There is nothing on this ep that you have not heard before, from other death metal bands both past and present, however with it being rooted in the 90’s sound, that is my fave death metal time period therefore I enjoy this ep.  Please like their FB page and since they’re also on Bandcamp head on over there, get the release and if they have a shirt, well it’s the holidays so order two, 1 for you and the other for a friend or family member. Shirts make great stocking stuffers.

Opening with the 6+ minute title track there is some ambience in the beginning, vocal chanting and shit in the background, before the Holy Shit moment spews forth with an amazing lead guitar riff.  Emotive, memorable and fast.  Over the massive double bass is quite impressive and the vocals of Magnus are more of a raspy snarl, with quite a bit of piss n vinegar to his tones.  Why are you so angry, Magnus?  I mean you live in a country where you have some of my favorite food, for  devil’s sake!  Anyway you won’t get those really grating higher pitch black metal vocals, this is pretty angry shit.  He’s got some nice screams too.  The main guitar riff is just extraordinary and when going into the faster melodic black metal riffing over the double bass I just sit the fuck back and enjoy.  Beautiful musical soundscapes.  The song gets into  some pianos thrown the fuck around moments, atmospheric guitar before the awesome chorus and guitar riff comes in and then a kind of brief death metal grunt. Another reason why I really love this song is the inclusion on some classic metal moments.  Whether it’s the guitar soloing or galloping Manilla Road like pace at certain moments, it all comes together in creating, as I speak, yeah, that’s right you heard it here first-my favorite song for 2020.  Brilliant!

“Sid-Ed-Djinn” is up next with some nice devilish choral aria chants in the background as the massive riff and stomping drum beat create sinkholes. The female vocals are certainly a nice touch and really add to the ambience of the song.  These moments lead into a nice bass guitar solo and then BOOM!, right into the faster part with a deathly scream, before the song settles into a mid-paced crawl with some great drums. I love the drum rolls and then I caught a little Maiden guitar melody quickly thrown in.  The 3.58 part features more of the female vocalist kind of adding some ethereal humming and almost as if she’s crying or writhing in ecstasy.  Either way it’s powerful and emotional.  This is another awesome song as the song ends with the female’s vocals taking you away to either the pits of hell or her bedroom.  It’s befitting to end the ep with the Rotting Christ cover-“Visions of the Dead Lover”.  The song is excellent  and guitar soloing –  impressive.  This is the perfect Rotting Christ cover for Yoth Iria to do.  The overall tone and emotive nature they incorporate goes with the rest of the original songs.

But then……..it’s over.  Too short.  The quality is certainly there, but this is like a real great cliffhanger in one of the streaming shows you probably watch all damn day, rather than getting your ass to work.  I want a full length from Yoth Iria and I want it now.  Damn I’m sounding like that bratty girl in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  Seriously I feel Under His Sway is that excellent and also special.  Creating emotive, heavy and angry music is not that hard, in certain circumstances, but make it memorable and maybe this is why me, of all fucking people, who is rooted in heavy metal and death metal, is dipping back into the black metal pool.

Too many good bands out there-I have given up now and Yoth Iria, if they remain intact, could quite possibly carve out a nice little niche in the black metal world, for themselves.  They have the musical where with all, cause they know how to write great songs and pack them in with so many memorable, brutal, dark, atmospheric and beautiful moments that I am rooting for them.  The production is excellent and I appreciate the classic metal undertones, as well as their take on black metal.  Under His Sway is outstanding.  Thank you Kostas and thank you Yoth Iria for writing an ep that I can’t stop listening to.  Damn you guys!

One of the bonus songs is a Rotting Christ cover song of “The Mystical Meeting”.  Being that I was never a Rotting Christ fan I really cannot tell you how it compares to the original.  The Psalm must do a good job of the cover as the song is not really done in their over the top brutal sound.  But since the song is pretty catchy it makes me wonder if I should start looking into Rotting Christ’s discography.  “Typhlosis” is a short song, under 2 minutes.  Mid-paced rumbling before erupting into a blast with a louder than average guitar solo pushed a little too high in the mix.  The solo comes back again and then the songs is over rather quickly.

The ep ends with “Yawning Chasm”, which is taken from one of the band’s live concerts.  The Psalm likes writing long songs as this track is close to 7 minutes.  The live recording sound works really well and the track has a little tinge of black metal, ala Darkthrone.  The song picks up to a death/thrash gallop and the song is pretty cool.  I is a damn fine release from a relatively unknown death metal act, which is great that Repulsive Echo Records brought this to the masses.  When this was originally released it was on Unholy Domain Records.  The packaging is well done with a nicely-layed out booklet.  I am waiting for a full-length from The Psalm, as they are one of the more original acts out there.  Kick Ass!!

Gutted’s debut album, Bleed For Us To Live was released in 1994 on Red Light Records.  Red Light were picking up all the brutal death metal acts and Gutted were pushed with this album, a lot.  Their ads were all over the place.  When I was with Internal Bleeding I met them a few times and they were cool and they played really heavy live sets.  One of the things Gutted did were write longer than average death metal songs.  While most death metal bands on average would write 3-4 minute tunes, Gutted pushed the song length upwards to 5 – 6 minutes.  Gutted also did not utilize blast beats as much as bands were doing back then.  They had the blasts, but they were never super-fast.  Gutted also were not afraid to have the bass guitar mixed in really well, something a lot of death metal bands did not always mix in well on the albums.  Rounding out Gutted was Billy Mills on guitars as well.

https://www.facebook.com/repulsiveecho/videos/799525090244687/

Album opener “Bleed” is truly a monstrously heavy number.  The bass guitar adds such an excellent element to their sound.  Well-placed guitar solos and some killer and devastating grooves towards the end of the song really make this a great and catchy track.  “Nailed to the Cross” has that killer heavy bass guitar right in the beginning before the isolated guitar riff and monstrous growl-chest collapsing! Gutted did have a lot of Cannibal Corpse influence to their sound, but since I was and still am a huge CC fan, it was always a bonus for me.  The reissue sadly does not bolster the sound with a remaster.  Issue resolved when I spoke with Kostas.  He stated they attempted to remaster the album but the sound began detracting from the heaviness.  When listening to the album, the production still holds up today-it’s really one of the heaviest productions to come out from that era-so I see what he is saying.  The booklet layout is beautiful.  Opens as a poster with lyrics, pictures, rough hand written lyrics, as examples of the band finishing lyrics and vintage band flyers.  Bleed For Us To Live is one of the catchiest death metal albums and still holds its weight today.  True organic brutality, with still one of the coolest old-school album covers.

In 1997 the self-titled Gutted album was released and it was more of a comp.  Had some new songs recorded a few years prior and included an early demo.  “Suffer in Exile” was one of the new songs and the heaviness was even more apparent and at this point Gutted were just made up of the Ditch brothers.  Keep it in the family I always say.  “Mask of Sanity” was vicious and some guitar solos which were eerily similar sounding to that of James Murphy.   The song just punishes and the organic heaviness is so real and in your face.

This reissue slaps together the Disease demo songs as well the Into The Gates of Insanity demo.  In total the reissue has 14 songs-total bang for your buck.  Parts of this reissue have been cleaned up a bit, with respect to sound and clarity.  The album cover was recreated and some great layout work with the cd.  The new album cover-hmmm..kind of on the fence with how I feel about it.  Has a female ghost extracting the life of some dude passed out.  The booklet layout has lyrics and pictures, adds and it was cool to see the 1995 Michigan Death Fest, in there.  We played that with Gutted and all the band logos adorn the flyer.  Nice picture of Michael Ditch, paying respect to his passing.  So yes-do whatever you can to get these reissues.  Keep Gutted’s name alive-these are killer death metal releases needing to be in your collection at once.

1997 was a tough year for death metal.  It was the year, my second album The Extinction of Benevolence, with Internal Bleeding, was released and we were already seeing a shift in the scene.  Some bands were either breaking up, slowing down or incorporating some alternative metal to their sound.  It was rough.  Fans were zoning out a bit more and some of the show turnouts, were not as crushing.  Clubs were also having more of a difficult time filling venues with just death metal bands.  Therefore there was a shift in some weird show combinations in live settings.  Regardless, Morta Skuld, were one of the bands who not only remained true to their sound, but expanded upon it, creating more of a darker themed album, with almost like a blatant middle finger to the evolving beloved death metal scene, thus creating quite a brutal album.  More of the bands were going more underground at this time, anyway and again, this time period and a year or two afterwards, many bands just broke up.

Out of print for years, Repulsive Echo, who have been responsible for some killer reissues, like Demented Ted, relatively recently are really putting the love into reissues.  I will soon be reviewing the Gutted and The Psalm reissues, by this great label.  This Greek label is run by a man by the name of Kostas who loves classic and well played death and thrash metal.  A man helping the scene and bringing some of these classics back to life.  This release, I guess you can say is in co-release with another label: Lusitanian Music.

This reissue has been almost a labor of love for Dave Gregor and now that it’s finally reissued he can breathe a sigh of relief.  The album has been remastered and is housed in a thick digipak.  Tracks like album opener “The Killing Machines”, just steamroll you with the remastering.  On this record Dave also dropped his pitch a bit and sounded even more brutal than ever.  The band opened this album with one of their strongest tracks.  The groove is punishing and the second song, “Save Yourself” has such a great guitar riff and the remastering will send you through trees at a billion mph.  Again with the added deepness to Dave’s vocals the band also incorporated some brutal blast beats on this album and it just adds to the middle finger aspect Morta Skuld was telling everyone, in 1997:  “You wussies can write your wimpy ass metal and change to become more popular-but F You, we’re here to write kick-ass death metal music and if you don’t like it than you can just go home and watch My Little Pony”.  Actually Morta Skuld never said this, just me.  The band also experimented with some darker lyrical themes and tracks like “The Anger in Disguise”, had almost a poly-rhythm aspect, as well as sprinkled across the 8 song 34 minute album, a few little industrial metal influences.  It just added to the depth of this amazing album.

I mentioned the remastering-yes it’s louder, prouder and massive.  The double bass will collapse chest cavities worldwide and make no apologies for doing so.  The lyric are included in the poster fold out booklet.  Joe Denby, who I greatly respect-Brutalism.com, does a great job writing a little biographical account of the album on the inside of the digipak.   He also does an interview with Dave, on the opposite side of one of the panels and I learned some new info about Morta Skuld.  The album cover is still cool and always a bit odd.  But yes, the skull, how it’s incorporated in the background was quite creative and really goes along with the album themes.  This is a fantastic reissue of Surface and a buy and die in my book-go out and get it now!!

Fast forward to 2013 and the two track EP Ruins of Humans hints that the familiarly devastating sound of Brutality’s earlier output is back with a screaming vengeance. This great morsel was a mere teaser, a tantaliser that certainly raised expectations that a full length would surely be around the corner. So here we are in January 2016, almost 20 years since the release of In Mourning and upon first listen Sea of Ignorance is more of the same brilliance.

Title track “Sea of Ignorance” quickly proves Brutality is on the same form that made their earlier records so special. The familiar thunderous drumming, Reigel’s unmistakeable roar, the fearsome grooves of the riffing, and of course the sublime melodious guitar work are all present and correct. By the time second track “48 to 52” rolls in, it becomes abundantly clear that Brutality have lost none of their incredible song writing skills, this is simply an exemplary piece of pure old-school death metal composition at its dizzying best.Such perfection continues throughout the album, with “Tribute” being a particular highlight. It is a very rare thing for death metal to truly move me these days, but the beautiful guitar harmonies on “Tribute” had the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end from the outset.

Perhaps the biggest surprise on Sea of Ignorance is the cover of Bathory’s classic 11 minute opus “Shores in Flames”. When I first heard about this cover I had my doubts. It begins sounding almost identical to the original complete with a very brave attempt to emulate Quorthon’s vocal sound, before slowly moving back into death metal territory. It works, and Brutality has certainly successfully put their stamp on a very well loved classic which was a ballsy move that could have easily backfired.

The greatest achievement of Sea of Ignorance is that given 20 years of advancement in recording technology have past, the band have successfully retained the integrity of the sound of their classic material that could have very much been mired by modern recording techniques. This has thankfully been avoided and while still crushingly heavy, the warmth and clarity within the sound that made When the Sky Turns Black such a classic is still there. Sea of Ignorance is nothing short of a triumph, a modern classic drenched in good old fashioned death metal ethos. What a great start to the new year!

Don’t get me wrong, there are still technical death metal bands out there doing a great job, but they are few and far between, almost lost in the ocean of a stagnant genre. Things weren’t always like this, back when the internet was something most people hadn’t even heard of there were bands pushing the death metal envelope in ways that left you wondering, “how the hell did they do that?”, without a YouTube guitar play through as a reference point. This was when the excitement was real, and Chicago’s Oppressor was one of those bands creating that excitement.

You may be forgiven for not remembering Oppressor, while they released three amazing albums in the 90s, they never quite got the recognition they deserved, whether it be through a lack of label promotion or a lack of self-promotion through the live circuit, I am not certain. What I am sure of is their small discography remains classic within death metal’s history, at a time when the genre was at its least popular. Many people would perhaps be more familiar with the band formed by three quarters of Oppressor’s line up, along with Broken Hope’s Shaun Glass after the band’s demise. Soil enjoyed moderate success and a heavy rotation on MTV in the early 2000s with their radio-friendly brand of hard rock, but that is just a side note.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tSnW_qPZ6U

Back to the band and release in question, Solstice of Oppression was first released in 1994 on Red Light Records to little fanfare. By this stage in time death metal already had its fair share of bands innovating beyond the boundaries of the now established sound. While the likes of Death, Pestilence, Atheist and Cynic had already made waves with more technical and unorthodox albums, often melding new techniques with influences outside of metal, there were also a handful of lesser-known bands following afterwards such as Europeans Phlebotomized, Disharmonic Orchestra and Pavor, and of course the USA’s Oppressor, all of which released equally as impressive albums as their more established peers. Where Solstice of Oppression stands out as a masterpiece of technical death metal is that it compromises none of the savagery or brutality that the genre was founded on in favour of the progressive and melodic touches of the jazz influences that are scattered throughout the album.

Instead of watering down the raw aggression of the music, these outside elements simply compliment and highlight it. The guitar work in particular is outstanding throughout, I can honestly say that from my memory this was the first time I had ever heard a metal band use a sweeping arpeggio outside of a solo and utilise it in a main riff (please correct me if there was something earlier), a technique which has now become a staple for technical death metal bands. This type of innovation alone is something that calls for Oppressor to be regarded as pioneers, even if their influence has spread far and wide beyond their original fan base, they should be credited with breaking down walls that many bands 20 years down the line never knew existed. I cannot stress enough how important this album was, and yes by today’s standards it sounds raw and unpolished, but it remains a milestone in the evolution of death metal. If you’re a fan of death metal, you should own this album!

This reissue is the first time Solstice of Oppression has ever appeared on vinyl, and has been lovingly presented by Repulsive Echo Records, who have been quietly doing a stellar job resurrecting hard to find and forgotten gems and re-releasing them in extremely well put together packages. Whether you are an existing fan of the band or a new one that needs to add this classic to your collection, I suggest you act quickly as there are only 250 pieces being produced. Catch it before it falls back into sublime obscurity!