Traumatized by sadistic circumstance at a young age and made a puppet possessed by the serial killer urge in the process, we are granted hellish and gory lessons on the nature of guilt and lacking nurture divulged within the horror psychedelia-dripping mind of this Jodorowsky inspired tirade through grinding death metal as Warsaw, Poland-based death metal quintet Sacrofuck present their second full-length album. ‘Święta Krew‘ offers a series of killings, blasphemic tidings, and plenty of riffs to hold the fanatics attention for the half hour it growls and wrenches through. Less a memorable pillar of thought and more a satisfyingly brutal whipping of classicist death metal with grindcore-beaten features this sophomore record is pure pleasure listening for the difficult to disturb.

Sacrofuck formed circa 2006 and more-or-less cranked out a few ragged rehearsals until their ‘Skraj Świadomo​ś​ci‘ demo in 2013, wrapping up what I’d consider the formative stages or, first era of the band which’d still had a fair amount of raw and brutal grindcore influence in their rhythms. Guitarist/vocalist Paplakathor (ex-HIV) basically restaffed the entire band starting with a new line-up in 2017 serving as the starting point for the groove, grind and gore-stricken development of the band from that point on. Their next demo (‘Palacz zwłok‘, 2018) sported a raw form of grinding death metal that would briefly lean toward a hardcore-stoked form which’d been tooled toward a more violent and atmospheric sound on ‘Ekstaza Upodlenia‘ (2019) though they’d generally stuck with the ~3-4 minute rippers within the realm of pure death metal. It is cool to see how they’d developed their sound up until that point, hammering away at an uncomplicated underground sound not unusual to the Polish death and grind-adjacent traditions of old.

The best primer for Sacrofuck‘s sound today is probably the decent enough slap of the ‘Primitive Fuck‘ (2020) demo, which’d sounded like a logical follow-up to their debut LP at the time. Beyond that point they’d added current Devilpriest guitarist Violator to the band and this’d freed up the hands of Paplakathor while also tightening up the overall performances on this new material giving us more riffs and more of the brain squeezing deathgrind touch of their previous records, the apex of this for my own taste is the Terrorizer-like attack of “Niech pêynie krew” but the first half (or, Side A) strikes into a sound which recalls to my old ears the more brutal side of Atrocity (United States) before we start to see heavier grooves step in a la post-‘Enemy of the Music Business‘ era grindcore. Again, all that means is that the drummer is a jackhammer rolling downhill, maniac barks are flying about in bursts and whenever things slow down to a stomp we get a heavier, more polished but no less putrid form from these folks compared to their last two releases. Those first four songs absolutely smoke to start and things only seem to get more intense from that point on.

“Czarnego kozêa ÿmierå” reminds us that this is a death metal band and one with solid grasp on how to incorporate those catchy grindcore-derived sharp turns into memorable death metal songs, this isn’t exactly ‘Utopia Banished’ in terms of its groove, the drumming is rooted in a more brutal style of death metal but there is the sense that Sacrofuck have thought about how to set off a big and lunging menace of a song like this to the point where its impact is more than a few explosive riffs. From that point in the tracklist it feels like they’ve kept the drums in this punchier double-bass steamroller mode more often and as such they’ve more room to trade a few lengthier solos and still uphold the tightly wound momentum that’d kicked off this ~30 minute LP. The only point where this’d become somewhat rote was “Ból”, a song which merely fills space with the usual death metal and grindcore shapes without screwing with the idea beyond burning through it. Nothing wrong with adding some grease to an overheated axle if it sustains the bloody flow of the record.

Ripping through Sacrofuck‘s discography before spending some serious time with ‘Święta Krew‘ made it clear as day that these folks have improved beyond an expected level of refinement where it seems the current line-up are right on the cusp of an unforgettable grind-tinged death metal album and even without pushing beyond that threshold I’d found this record was entertaining enough to let rip for hours at a time per its tightened guitar arrangements and increasing focus on the blitzed slipstream of ‘old school’ death and grind muse. It may not stick in mind in the long run but there is a very correct ratio explored here which’d lined up well per my own tastes. A moderately high recommendation.

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