The Hole hail from the Canary Islands of Spain and draw inspiration from modern death metal and classic thrash metal for their throaty, furious death metal sound. On ‘The Wrath’ the band show a remarkable amount of growth beyond their 2014 full-length ‘A Monument to the End of the World’. They’ve kept straddling that fine line between depraved death/groove metal and classic heavy metal influences but it sounds like the guitar compositions have edited out some of the more generic riffs in favor of more focused songs. If anything they’ve included more classic heavy metal lead guitars often resembling those of 90’s melodic death metal bands as they morphed into groove metal bands.

As much as I see their production sound leaning towards 00’s melodeath songs like “The Shepherd of Souls” seem more intent on shifting into full death metal mode more often. It isn’t the most original sound but it also doesn’t feel like retro music made for nostalgia’s sake at all. I would recommend this to fans of the current version of Torture Squad, Dew-Scented, or recent Exodus albums. It has that same mix of moshable riffs, groove metal aesthetics, and a touch of death metal. I would love to hear more death metal influences in their sound and something more ‘raw’ and less precise.

‘The Wrath’ shows a young band’s increasing potential well beyond their full-length and shows a lot of promise of where they’ll be musically when they record a follow-up. I’d recommend at least checking out “Glory Kill” to get a sense of why I even mention ‘groove metal’ alongside this band’s name and melodeath elements in the lead guitars. Also “Dawn of Deception” for something more straightforwardly death metal.

Cold and dark. 3.0/5.0

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