Four gruesomely stabbed bolts of black lightning taken to the chest Hyvinkää, Finland-based blackened death-thrashing quartet Malicious‘ first strike beyond their full-length debut comes as an outrageous act of violence, a quick and ruinous mLP. ‘Merciless Storm‘ hits like a blast cap within a rotten bag of blood, cut jagged into chunks of raw and stinking hot death metal mania which explodes quick and stains everything it hits. If you’re in heavy music for the riffs, the rhythmic traditions of thrashing extremism taken to skull-shocking exaggeration, then you’ll do well to weather their gig and get struck by the front-to-back blazing death machine concocted here.

Built in the spirit of mid-to-late 80’s death metal and the grey areas that’d briefly existed between nascent black, death and extreme thrashing forms Malicious would unite beyond a death-thrash metal crew (Tyfon) circa 2011. Somewhere in between a dozen name-drops you’ll find a thorough enough dive through the discography per my review of the band’s debut LP (‘Deranged Hexes‘, 2020) a few years back wherein I’d described their sound as “Belligerence, absolute disregard for anything but the riff and the havoc of classic death-thrashing forms…” in relation to death metal in its most vibrant death metal era where tapes like ‘Thy Kingdom Come‘, ‘Taste of Blood‘, ‘Morbid Visions‘ translated to the maniac forms Malicious are most often compared to, such as those of Vorum, Degial, and Beyond (Deu) each of which have their own nowadays equivalents or exaggerations today. We can view most all of the band’s work a potent, quick shot form of black/death metal but from the point of view of early extreme thrash at its richest variation.

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Degial: An Uppsala, Sweden based death metal band cut from a similar cloth/ideal with members having been involved in Watain‘s live lineup as well as Vorum and the revival of Unpure. If you’d like some direct spiritual back-up, rush right over to the phenomenal ‘Death’s Striking Wings‘ (2012).

Obscure Burial: A brilliant Finnish death metal band who’d represented a similar ideal but with a different sense of atmosphere. Their self-titled debut (‘Obscure Burial‘, 2017) still holds up and does well to represented their short-lived legacy of surreal yet riff-throttled black/death.

Need more speed? More riffs? More insanity? Omegavortex and Concrete Winds assault the soul well beyond the death of the body.

Barked harder, resonating with brick-shattering clarity, and cutting in and out of pieces just as fast the core effect of Malicious is not encumbered with any real complications that’d put space between your ears and their riffs. The effect is sweetly cacophonic, ripped at a few hundred miles per hour and hits like a wide-eyed panic attack on LSD in ~2.5-3 minute intervals where a handful of riffs cut in quick and the two guitarists frantically embellish every statement in line with the declarations of the vocalist. In most ways this amplifies the irreverence of late 80’s extreme thrash without fussing over precision to the point that the grit here is gravel-sized and rips off more than skin as the body is dragged along for the ride. The wizened and death/thrash widened ear will feel immediately at home per the first couple of songs, a half-distorted bass guitar tone grinding in the back and the rustle of the drummer going for pure murder as the repetitious strikes of the first minute generate their electricity. The main focus I’d picked up on right away was that they were juicing these riffs in order to develop them for the next transition rather than whip through one great idea every fifteen seconds we find ‘Merciless Storm‘ allows itself more variations of each riff in the way a band like Insanity might, especially on the bounding and neck-cracking push of the opener/title track.

The middle two pieces on this mLP, “Invasive Terror” and especially the brilliant-ass “Ambient Sonic Annihilation” cut into that late 80’s Browning-era Morbid Angel vein once again hitting those punctuative ‘Thy Kingdom Come‘-esque riffs without indulging in a technical direction beyond a few tremolo’d riffs to keep the speed crazed and focused. This is the soul, or, the pedigree of grooves which Malicious bring to all of their work and in this case that high level of performance only needs iteration rather than supplication from my point of view. ‘Merciless Storm‘ picks up where the prior album left off, amps of the wilding scrawl of its leads and cranks the speed but doesn’t interrupt the caustic death metal mania of their act with ulterior pacing or any big changes made. At just ~11 minutes this single-sided 12″ LP gets a screen printed Side B and I don’t think real death-thrash or blackened death-thrash fan will argue with the elaborate packaging for such a rousing event thanks to a fine cover art and blistering material within. A high recommendation.

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