• SHORT REVIEWS • Our fifth edition of Short Reviews for 2024 releases finds me grabbing at six releases from the general pool of February with a few from later in the month. This year Short Reviews will arrive every ~1-2 weeks dependent on how many extra releases are worth talking about. // These are more easygoing and casual than longform reviews, so relax and think for yourself. I’ve done my best to showcase the most interesting works that I come across while still presenting some decent variety here but choices boil down to what sticks, what inspires or what is worth writing about. — If you find something you dig go tell the band on social media and support them with a purchase! If you’d like your music reviewed, read the FAQ and send promos to: grizzlybutts@hotmail.com

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From their surprising Century Media-repped debut LP in 2013 through their third album in 2017 French blackened death metal band Necrowretch essentially acted as a spiritual surrogate for Swedish style aggression during a period where Necrophobic were inactive. While each of those first three records still hold up quite well we wouldn’t get their own version of reality until 2020 when ‘The Ones From Hell‘ began to sport black-thrashing speed in addition to a more elaborate vision of riffcraft which still resembled that 90’s black/death metal style with otherwise differing production values. While that fourth record showed an interesting performative style and, since it featured members of Chaos Echœs and Cadaveric Fumes, I’d spent quite a bit of time enjoying its admirably different take on blackened death metal.

Of course ‘Swords of Dejjal‘ does its best to do most everything bigger and better than the previous album and for a few pieces this black-thrashing death mystique hangs heavy and thunderous in its big venue worthy soldiering yet at this scale they can’t help but repeat a lot of what bands like Watain have been honing for an additional decade or two. With that said this is still an engaging riff-focused record which meets the high standard of drumming the previous album had touched upon and generally writes a more cinematically struck experience into a taut and toothsome ~38 minute spin. Though I’d still hold onto ‘Satanic Slavery‘ (2017) as their overall best work for my own taste this fifth record did end up holding up throughout the month as one of the more thrillingly riffed-at records out so far this year. Check out: “Vae Victis”, “Dii Mauri”.

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Chronicles are an occult death metal quintet from Dhaka, Bangladesh whom you might recall per my coverage and premiere of their raw and wrathful 2022 demo tape ‘Chaos Cosmogony‘ via Helldprod. In the couple of years since then they’ve done well to flesh out their sound into a well-rounded, brutal and ‘old school’ adjacent death metal LP here. Though their sense of percussive force is still unbridled and whipped-at in most cases there is a surprising amount of variety on this ten song album where songs range from two to four minutes and often lean into punkish or thrashing bursts to break things up where songs like “Vigour and Vitality” recalls early Master whereas a piece like “Engraved in Chaos” feels closer to 1994 in its construction but still cuts into quick and dizzied strokes. Overall a solid debut effort with a few of the right type of rough edges and a tough sound. Best riffs: “Wit Bedlam”, “Angra Mainyu”, “Primordial Atrocities”.

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Black Hate is one of the longer running projects from Mexico City-based black metal musician B.G. Ikanunna, wherein the style of this band has evolved into a form of death metal influenced black metal. ‘Vía Purgativa: Qui spiritu Diaboli aguntur hi filii Satanae sunt” is their sixth full-length album and yet another example of their blunt and simply stated groove-focused style which makes thorough use of repetition and bombast to keep these ~8-10 minute songs burning fast as possible on this fairly long record. The concept, lyrics and the morbid stage they are setting here is appreciable and the album artwork is entirely brilliant but the music itself doesn’t do very much for me in terms of rhythmic complexity. Most of the riffs are entirely straight forward and trace simple shapes while the lead guitars occasionally elevate a song quite a bit (see: “Ascension of a Burning Soul”). The second half of the album is decidedly better for my own taste, still declarative and with the vocals maxed out at ten, but the charm of the band and their occult exploration within still reads as substantial. Best riffs: “Disparagmos (o del Sacrificio)”, “Tempestad(o de la transubstanciation”.

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With their sixth full-length album Rennes, France-based quartet set aside their death metal interior for the sake of creating a more accessible alt-metal tinged style of industrial sludge metal, think of late 90’s Godflesh with the despair at an all time high, the guitars cranked and a layered post-metal feeling infused. This seventh album is a direct follow-up with a less experimental approach to pacing. A record in this style has to find an exacting medium to manage being a “beats” album, a riff album, and find room to work in some manner of vocal hooks too and while I’d felt like album number seven gets it right here and there some of the surprising energy and soundscapes of ‘Privation‘ (2023) are traded for a much steadier, easier listen which only works for me at very high volume. I’d heavily preferred Side A here as ‘Perdition‘ moves from a dark and frustrated place toward despairing, busied beats on Side B which lack that heavier impact. Glad to see the band leaning into this style and I’d particularly enjoyed “Mauvais Vivant” and “La Haine”.

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They Came From Visions is an earthen dark folk influenced atmospheric/post-black metal trio from Kyiv, Ukraine and you might recall their ‘Cloak of Darkness, Dagger of Night‘ debut LP generated some hype back in 2020. This second full-length sounds overall more accomplished in terms of its render and refined vision, an album which leans into its chiming clean guitar tones for fast and cutting moderne, melodic yet medieval black metal pieces which are captivating in most every case. While the vocals have improved quite a bit for my own taste since the first album it is the guitar work which sells the album for my own taste, intricate and expressive pieces which develop patiently and usually with deeper consideration for how they will develop over the course of ~7-8 minutes. As with most records in this style it best best to hit play and wait for the album to call for your attention, in this case I’d found myself transfixed by this albums determined displays of guitar progression, multi-layered compositions, and how well that interplay tended to carry the experience to a place of dark tension. An unexpected and haunting find. Best songs: “Burning Eyes Blackened Claws”, “The Sign of Damnation”.

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After disbanding Acheron in 2018 and moving on toward this horror themed and traditional heavy/doom metal inspired band soon after Vincent Crowley‘s legacy of personae hasn’t necessarily been redefined but rather given a classics bound treatment in natural combination of traditional and extreme metal. Two albums in and we’re still getting a focus on horror film references and mid-paced lumbering, an intensity achieved by way of double-bass drumming applied to heavy metal. This allows us to get right the compositional signature of the artist, evident since the early 90’s, as a dramatic form not unrelated to his early associations with the Florida death metal scene but directly suggested as a vessel intending to channel their love for bands like Candlemass and King Diamond (they cover “Killer” here) from a black/death infused point of view.

For an album of six minute heavy metal songs ‘Anthology of Horror‘ is far more convincing than the band’s 2021 debut ‘Beyond Acheron‘ not only for the sake of the recording being slightly more balanced but the songcraft featuring quadruple the actual riffs and less fussing over organs and leads as often. As a result there is a leaden groove to many of these pieces which feels tightened and more energetic, inspired than their debut so if that one didn’t work for you I’d say give this one at least a full rip through its ~50 minute ask. My only complaint isn’t all that deep, they’ve got one too many songs on this thing and I’m not sure I could be the one to pick it since the parity of quality is strong throughout the full listen. Favorite songs: “Blood Moon Lycanthropy”, “That Which Lurks Beneath the Sea”.

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