SHORT REVIEWS Our first set of May 2022 releases finds us sticking with records released during the first two weeks of the month, wherein a density of death metal influx has forced a pretty quality set of jams to focus on here. I’ve done my best to grab ahold of the most interesting stuff I come across while still presenting some decent variety here, having had to pare down a selection of over seventy-five releases is not ideal but I can only do so much. If you find something you dig in the lot of ’em, go tell the band on social media and support them with a purchase. The arts require your support and/or own contributions. If you’d like your music reviewed send promos to: grizzlybutts@hotmail.com

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Info:
ARTIST:	UFOMAMMUT
TITLE:	Fenice
LABEL(S):	Neurot Recordings, Supernatural Cat
RELEASE DATE:	May 6th, 2022

Northwestern Italian psychedelic metal trio Ufomammut have been a fixture in experimental psych-doom adjacent realms since the turn of the millennium, fostering an enduring seeker for new sounds, deeper audio-visual complexity and perhaps to a fault by some accounts. What’d keep me coming back for each release is this compelling sense of ‘evil’ heavy metal dread and riff-worship they’d always instilled in otherwise effects-slammed and meandering psychedelia, it’d never come across campy so much as built from a sort of volcanic sense of doom which yet holds fast on ‘Fenice‘, their ninth full-length since 1999. This one is a bit different and not only for the sake of their first major line-up change since forming, having found a new drummer circa 2021, but in its generous trading of urgency for captivating eerie. Atmospheric tension has long been a strong feature of Ufomammut‘s sound yet they’re hitting it decidedly thick this time around, leaving plenty of space to fully recede and re-land their ship, poking holes in the ozone layer that’d kept previous albums grounded and working through odd-timed and chunk-heavy rhythms in the past. As the cover art and the title of the album suggest, this is a well-communicated rebirthing process of sorts and while I wouldn’t say their signature bass-driven roll has lost its edge they’ve certainly loosened their shoulders and found an easier flow-state to present their progression heavy work within.

The stretch between opener “Duat” through “Psychostasia” in particular read as one great big drifting stretch of contiguous entity, reaching for mid-70’s synth warmth and creeping post-metallic builds with bigger riffs shaping movement rather than hammering away in a sort of late 90’s aggro-stoner metal kind of way. Their spaceship lands around “Pyramind” over on Side B and we get the full shock of their phasing synth boosted heavy riffing therein, a reveal which takes some patience to achieve yet has a certain appreciable heft to it that makes the full listen all the more worthwhile. Change is always a good thing in the hands of psych music enthusiasts, though the change ‘Fenice‘ enacts won’t end up being so drastic or alien that existing fandom will be disturbed I’d found this record met its goal of standing out within Ufomammut‘s greater discography.

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Info:
ARTIST:	TZOMPANTLI
TITLE:	Tlaxcaltiliztli
LABEL(S):	20 Buck Spin
RELEASE DATE:	May 6th, 2022

Well, yeah, I mean if you’d jumped on those last couple of Xibalba releases like I did you’d been hollering “Making a death/doom album already, man” for a few years and turns out dude (Brian Ortiz) was already on it with a well-received debut EP (‘Tlamanalli‘, 2019) and now this full-length which braves a pretty treacherous gap between cool-ass bedroom project and big-deal debut. Up front the aesthetic is a bit off, not entirely indicative of the doom metallic side of the band in favor of an underground bestial black/death sort of look. A distinct introduction for the eyes but not so imaginative that you’ll expect to be greeted with a fully fleshed-out world death/doom metal often presents. This turns out to be the right call as we land upon a series of ritualistic gore scenarios braced by a plain, 2000’s Jungle Rot level of riffing stretched into an even more brutal, slugged-out tempo which renders much of the guitar work here easily read and somewhat indistinct overall. At a basal level the bones of this death/doom metal record are solid yet rarely strike out into unheard-of realms of the doomed dead.

Where ‘Tlaxcaltiliztli‘ shines is in its creation of gory vignettes, choosing to focus on glorified scenes of ritual sacrifice and the brutal practices of what I assume implies pre-colonized Mexican civilizations, the use of the Nahuatl language indicating Aztec/Mexica culture and its remaining diaspora. So, they’ve not gone fully ‘Roots’ (as in Sepultura) with this concept just yet but we do find some purposeful use of indigenous instrumentation in setting these scenes, implying quite a lot in fairly simple construction. The full listening experience is satisfyingly dense and surprisingly truncated at a brief 33 minutes, never fully breaching the level of experimental excess one naturally expects from extreme doom metal yet having created some meaningful combination of accoutrement and simply solid death metal riffing. I’d found it hard not to expect more than I was given while listening to ‘Tlaxcaltiliztli‘ since there is such a rich history of Mexican extreme metal bands going nuts with this theme (see: early Xipe Totec, Mictlan) yet there was no point where the album overreached or underserved the intent implied within the band’s first EP.

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Info:
ARTIST:	I AM THE NIGHT
TITLE:	While the Gods are Sleeping
LABEL(S):	Svart Records
RELEASE DATE:	May 6th, 2022

Gulf-bound Finnish black metal quartet I Am the Night arrive with a proper full-length debut and an “Oh… holy shit!” lookin’ Necrolord painting on the front with the very real, very well realized goal of giving their own push towards a classic Scandinavian black metal vision with ‘While the Gods are Sleeping‘ and of course, the result is as good as it looks. Directed by the brilliant hand of Markus Vanhala (Omnium Gatherum, Insomnium) alongside members of Paradise Lost, Horizon Ignited, and Locust Year this fine record comes with an unusually adept study of 90’s black metal theatrics, not an implication of the grandiosity and violence of the era but a matching of the ambitious misanthropic spirit of the era. Yes, this comes with tropes you’ll identify such as the very ‘Storm of the Light’s Bane‘ intro to “Ode to the Nightsky” but for the first several spins there is yet going to be some amount of thrill derived from a proper invocation rather than a fumbled implication. They’ve more-or-less focused on the peak statement of the era, naming mid-decade classics from Dissection, Emperor and Mayhem as the impetus for the act and their enduring appreciation for those standards. This could read as run-of-the-mill to some but we so rarely get such a professional recording with at least -some- considerable insight into what’d made those old records worth remembering. Over on Side B we find a path out of nostalgic to some degree with “Among The Unseen Ones” with some melodic death riff tendency and a satisfyingly over the top spoken rant implying that they could certainly take this -somewhere- with some interest without resorting to eh, modern populist metal nonsense. I’d have written a much longer review of this one but, the appeal of this record is very fucking obvious even at a glance and their attack of the riff picks up anything you might’ve missed.

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Info:
ARTIST:	CAVERNLIGHT
TITLE:	As I Cast Ruin Upon the Lens That Reveals My Every Flaw
LABEL(S):	Translation Loss Records
RELEASE DATE:	May 13th, 2022

A somewhat longer album with overall shorter, more numerous statements made than its predecessor, ‘As I Cast Ruin Upon the Lens That Reveals My Every Flaw‘ finds Wisconsin-based atmospheric sludge metal quartet Cavernlight with more to divulge, more emotions hanging in waiting suspension to release, and a big of an tortured ego-death to consider as it floats along. I’d normally look to post-‘The Eye of Every Storm‘ Neurosis when finding tonal precedence for this sort of band, and perhaps that holds up in terms of vocal arrangements/style to some degree, but much of what these fellowes do merely comes with a taste likely honed-in upon when atmosludge unconditionally became “post-metal” yet wasn’t, uh, the new bad college rock gone metal standard it is today. A miserable, end of their rope sentiment feels appropriately severe as the full listen reveals itself in unevenly set stages, confessional mental destitution and gentle, sparsely resonant breaks only add to this severity of circumstance yet when it comes time to break out a big, ugly sludge riff they all thankfully arrive with a genuine sense of doom and relevance to each piece rather than simply plopping-forth a loud bit for plain effect. Of course this suicidal melodrama is either reserved for a certain mood (or, creates it) and in my case I’m only there for it because Cavernlight don’t allow a moment of my own thoughts to interrupt, much like a surreal dream-set art film you’ll have to shut up and let it all bleed out in front of you to really “get” the proper effect. Painful, wrenching stuff but gloriously so.

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Info:
ARTIST:	DEMONICAL
TITLE:	Mass Destroyer
LABEL(S):	Agonia Records
RELEASE DATE:	May 6th, 2022

Back in 2018 I’d been stoked on ‘Chaos Manifesto‘ as Demonical on fire, in their element and swinging hard so, that’d probably contributed to the follow-up ‘World Domination‘ (2020) landing kinda flat for my taste. It was absolutely up to par for their cause and still better than the grand majority of pure Swedish death metal records out at the time but it didn’t have this particular band’s inventive semi-melodic side engaged at all, ripping through some of their most straightforward songs without the usual standard engaged. Anyhow, ‘Mass Destroyer‘ finds the fire relit and does a fine job of ensuring each song lands with the band’s signature applied, this means a harder-thrashing and far more melodic death infused approach this time around. The doomed riff break in the middle of “Sun Blackened”, the needled tremolo melodies of opener “We Conquer the Throne” and the classic stomp of “Dödsmarsch” all contribute to the high energy kick that Demonical uphold throughout this record, sounding both bluntly traditional yet fully behind every movement. If I had much more to say than, “Wow, this is more like it.” I’d have gone for a longer review but the gist of it is that it sounds like they give a shit and ‘Mass Destroyer‘ inspires that much more because of it.

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Info:
ARTIST:	MORGUE SUPPLIER
TITLE:	Inevitability
LABEL(S):	Transcending Obscurity Records
RELEASE DATE:	May 6th, 2022

Morgue Supplier have been an intermittent fixture of the gory Chicago-area deathgrind sphere since the late 90’s and I’d say their discography comes with mixed results between some very good brutal death inspired pieces to some all-out goregrind clunkers, really depends where they end up going with any one particular recording session. ‘Inevitability’ follows one of their better received full-lengths (‘Morgue Supplier‘, 2016) with an even more avant-grind angle, making good use of mathy and frantic riffing to create the illusion of intensity. Between the programmed drums and their tendency to push the pace of the record to an absurd place (see: “My Path to Hell”) I’d more-or-less lost interest in this one just beyond the cello-grinding “Departure (Interlude)” as the songs got a bit longer and struggled to find fresh trickery to keep the energy up. Though I’d appreciated the spiritedly violent the first impression the album made and enjoyed the off-kilter brutality of their approach, it just didn’t make enough of a case for repeat spins.

Info:
ARTIST:	SKULLSHITTER
TITLE:	Goat Claw
LABEL(S):	Nerve Altar
RELEASE DATE:	May 6th, 2022

Brooklyn-borne deathgrind trio Skullshitter absolutely blaze through this second long-player with style, resembling the still hardcore punk-affected brand of grindcore at full force in the late 80’s and its death-heavy push in the early 90’s without making a musty, old too-serious mess of that spiritus. Though they’re probably far more precise and brutally delivered than my vague genrefication might suggest the lot of ‘Goat Claw‘ does have a sort of spectrum in mind which ranges from ‘From Enslavement to Obliteration‘-sized bursts to songs that occasionally manage to take their weirding all the way out towards ‘Acts of the Unspeakable‘ freakouts at their most enthused. I’d loved the split between Side A‘s all over the place burst grinding and the more death metal-edged Side B, each featuring their heavy hardcore punk/powerviolence side in sparing amounts. Grab it if you’re looking for something as stoked as No/Más or Escuela Grind but want ’em to weird up on few classic horror deathgrind tangents, too.

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Info:
ARTIST:	KATHAROS
TITLE:	Of Lineages Long Forgotten
LABEL(S):	Willowtip Records
RELEASE DATE:	May 13th, 2022

Stockholm-based black metal quartet Katharos formed back in 2006, arguably the most dire point of saturation for symphonic black metal acts and at a time where black metal had fully begun pulling the plug on over-produced, bombastic keyboard driven anything. They’d set the project aside for nearly ten years while the main composers focused on their finger-down-the-throat antics in death metal band Repuked, eventually returning in 2016 with their debut full-length ‘Exuvian Heraldry‘, a chance to make good on what they were working on in 2007 with their ‘De Cinere‘ demo, with a somewhat melodic black/death metal sound which featured prominent and satisfyingly over the top use of keyboards/synth. From my point of view it was just an average album, though they’d clearly paid close attention to the details of the recording and made sure the keyboards provided a worthy spectacle.

On some level the opposite could be said about this follow-up six years in the making, wherein they’ve shoved the keyboards into the backseat as an ethereal chamber-resonant backing to the carve of their rhythm guitar work. The result is basically identical to Dark Fortress‘ output in the later 2000’s, very much along the lines of ‘Eidolon‘ due to the placement of the keyboards, the higher-paced solidarity of the drumming, and the overall professional quality of the recording. I suppose the proper tag then becomes “black metal” rather than symphonic at that point, since there is no real prominence given to the keyboardist over the dominant strike of the drums and guitars outside of the intro to “Lay Yersinian Siege” and parts of closer “Most Dread Portent”. Eh, none of this is necessarily complaining on my part as I’d been a teenager when symphonic black metal hit the United States popular metal zeitgeist hardest and still enjoy this style quite a bit. It doesn’t stand out to me as anything extraordinary beyond the professional, above average audio-visual package but I did enjoy wheeling through it a handful of times.

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Info:
ARTIST:	TENEBRO
TITLE:	L’inizio di un Incubo
LABEL(S):	Xtreem Music
RELEASE DATE:	May 3rd, 2022

Italian horror death metal primitivists Tenebro make it pretty clear what they’re all about at face value here on their debut full-length, a simple brutal death metal attack heavily influenced by Mortician‘s anti-sound design and in full feature of hammer-horror movie clips and programmed drums. They’ve got to have some love for Impetigo in there too along the way but overall the intentionally lo-fi clunking of ‘L’inizio di un Incubo‘ couldn’t be more Rahmer-forward in its attack, whipping out odd-numbered drum machine blasts alongside slower, doomed riffing (“Necrofilia”) for the sake of exhausting every possible trick one could pull from that well. To keep the quite long, mid-paced thread of it all going they’ve got nods all over the gore metal spectrum going on but none of it quite hits a Machetazo sort of performative spike for my own taste, flatlining by the time the second half is readied up. They’ve got the sound and the idea right, and that part of the experience is rad, but they’ve not really taken it anywhere interesting.

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Info:
ARTIST:	PATRISTIC
TITLE:	Apologetica
LABEL(S):	Pulverised Records
RELEASE DATE:	May 6th, 2022

Roman blackened technical death metal act Patristic present a stunning flood of spectacular action in black-luminant dissonant framing of their proposed primeval window into the sinister Christian indoctrination of their Eternal City, a capture of the imagination more than a full-bore concept mLP, ‘Apologetica‘ is in essence a confrontation of propaganda within an ancient spiritual war. Eh, well if you’re not sure what the hell I’m talking about this project from members of Bedsore and Hideous Divinity essentially brings a very lightly dissonant touch to a brutal blackened death metal sound, something vaguely like Ulcerate in terms of the greater dramatism applied to a high standard of performance. The title track is informative enough to start, bearing a convincing ride with a few lightning strikes of dissonance and some intensely set choral vocals to keep the scale of their rhythms grand. Though I’d approached this release believing it to be a sort of side-project on a whim the actual riffcraft and challenging movement of these pieces does ultimately resemble a well-conceived and appropriately dark empyrean tonality and quickly creates the need for more pieces in this fashion. The two part “Praescriptio” is an even bigger event to some degree as the subtle underpinned layers of keyboards and frenzied lead guitars begin to bleed out into the reveal of the second part, making an overall memorable and appreciably extreme statement which begs for elaboration. I’d have more to say if I knew more at this point but the gist of it is that this is one of just a few essential grabs in early May.

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Info:
ARTIST:	COPROPHILIA
TITLE:	The Demo Collection 1991-1992
LABEL(S):	Helter Skelter
RELEASE DATE:	May 6th, 2022

Southwestern Finnish death metal quintet Coprophilia evolved beyond the members’ interest in hardcore punk music in the late 80’s, eventually choosing early death metal and grindcore as their main gig for just long enough to record an infamously hard to find demo tape ‘Coprophilia‘ (1991) amongst various other recordings done in 1992. This compilation collects the first demo and the best of the properly recorded ’92 demo tracks into one package. The main draw here is obviously the genuine archive of Finnish death metal’s true history — A style which is reflected within Coprophilia‘s own punk-laced oddity by way of curious use of melodies common to nascent hardcore punk acts like Dead Kennedys and also expressed quite heavily via influence from ‘Symphonies of Sickness‘-era Carcass and Napalm Death‘s transition from ‘Scum‘ to the then absolutely huge ‘Harmony Corruption’. This is actually a very normal set of parameters for early Finnish death, which is often attributed to Swedish imbibe in bad faith when it was in fact weird-ass grindcore and their original hardcore punk/crossover freakout crews (see: Protected Illusion) that’d given Finndeath its initially unusual regional character. Though this still applies to the grimier lo-fi grunting and sometimes avant-garde whims of the 1992 material here the main draw for most classic death metal archivists will be the slightly naïve but heavy as hell 1991 demo. An absolutely essential archive if you are as big an early Finnish death metal fan as I am.

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Info:
ARTIST:	SEPULCHRAL CURSE
TITLE:	Deathbed Sessions
LABEL(S):	Personal Records, Lycanthropic Chants, Transylvanian Recordings
RELEASE DATE:	May 6th, 2022

If you’ll recall, or at least revisit, songs like “Into the Darkness Unknown” from Sepulchral Curse‘s debut full-length ‘Only Ashes Remain‘ (2020) you’ll find some light precedence for this increasingly melodic style they’ve brought on this latest EP. I’d consider this a shot at blackened melodic death metal of a surprisingly versatile, not so normative variety. The catchy vaunt of “Harvesting the Bloodlines”, the blackened soldiering-on of “Dystheist” and the galloping modern disso-blackened sword swings of “Circular Aeons” each suggest worthy headspace to develop within a full-length that’d likely be considerably different than their debut. Whatever they’re onto here is memorable, a bit weird and unexpected in the best sense.

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Info:
ARTIST:	WACHENFELDT
TITLE:	Faustian Reawakening
LABEL(S):	Threeman Recordings
RELEASE DATE:	May 6th, 2022

Wachenfeldt is a symphonic progressive blackened death metal trio hailing from central Sweden lead by maestro Thomas von Wachenfeldt (Wombbath) whom loosely themes this second full-length around historical totalitarianism, the warrior path/legends of Hälsingland, and a sort of heroism that comes from knowing the darkest places of the mind, or, the literal underworld. ‘Faustian Reawakening‘ caught my ear for its sort of thrashing death metal evolved sound which might pull the ear towards Behemoth one moment and the brief ‘Ho Draken Ho Megas‘ era of Therion (or, something like Hollenthon‘s ‘Opus Magnum‘) the next, using fantastically set orchestral synth/keyboards for a sense of spacious presence. They’ve escaped the sort of late 90’s Old Man’s Child level of circus thrashing black metal cheese by way of steady resolve, never falling into the lure of performative grandstanding and letting their own ‘symphonic’ resonance build within the faster action of each song.

You’ll need to whip out the ole 2000’s black/death metal resolve here as these are loud, punishing and quite long pieces which average 6-7 minutes of roar and snare-snapping hits throughout with a hundred layered guitar and keyboards built into said bombast. I’d found the nearly full hour refreshingly maximal, largely leaving the subtleties to its finer layers and simply assaulting the ear with a storming death’s head orchestra. This’d all reach the point of well and good enough by the end of “Contemporary Eschatology” midway through as there are no particularly profound additions to the whole event ’til “Where Everything Ends” provides the grand finale it promises. Though this all reads cold, insistent and hammered at to start I’d found myself curiously drawn back to ‘Faustian Reawakening’ repeatedly, enjoying the brutal yet regal pulverization of the full listen and eventually finding a reasonable amount of nuance to several pieces.

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