Rotterdam, Netherlands-based brutal death metal quartet HOUWITSER return for a sixth full-length album fourteen years beyond their last and up front I can confirm that they’ve not wavered from their long standing directive in creation of pure and coldly cut riff-obsessed brutality. ‘Sentinel Beast‘ pushes this long-standing truce between classic death metal’s inherent songcraft focused creed and the brink of tuneless chugging savagery, they still exist right on the cusp of percussive machine-like cruelty gone too far but never sidestep entertaining strings of serious classicist cadence and coherent structure. If we must reach for the ole “they don’t make ’em like this anymore” in this case it may only fit for the sake of the band having spent ~ten years trying to launch this one.

Houwitser formed circa 1997 as ‘Bastard Saints‘-era Sinister bassist Michel Alderliefsten left that band along with a few others, taking vocalist Mike van Mastrigt and drummer Aad Kloosterwaard along for their debut LP (‘Death… But Not Buried‘, 1999) taking on a brutal death metal style with some deathgrind inspiration leaving it frayed and violent at the edges. At the time they were one of a few bands signaling a crucial uptick in a new generation of brutal death in the Netherlands, a different focal point than peers Severe Torture, Disavowed and Prostitute Disfigurement all of whom had clearly taken inspiration from specific United States scenes or bigger names for foundation. These folks kept their songs brief, hit hard with a similarly formed next-gen but still canonically sourced brutal death metal style without entirely ignoring the popularity of deathgrind at the time.

By 2001 the floodgates had broken and these groups were landing their debuts while Houwitser were working on their third LP (‘Rage Inside the Womb‘, 2002), their third vocalist, and their first and only LP for Osmose Productions and for my own taste this was their best work to date even if I’d appreciated the first two records for their raw and violently percussive style. At a time when bands like Deeds of Flesh were more-or-less outpacing most groups in terms of sheer scope of riffcraft and brutality hit like a simpler, more straight forward wall of gore and caught my ear at the time. For my own taste they’d lost that underground spark by the time their fourth album released and it faded when the band split in 2004 before eventually reforming and putting out the so-so, but still entirely characteristic, ‘Bestial Atrocity‘ (2010) beyond that point; Looking back on their discography Houwitser always upheld a reasonable level of artistry and consistency in their work but their core purpose was no more complicated in its appeal than the relentlessly violent finesse of early 2000’s brutal death metal in general. In simpler terms, a few of their albums had all the riffs, an ‘old school’ touch, and others just kinda chunked along at a decent standard.

Having long been a fan of Sinister, and a collector of brutal death metal CDs of a certain era, I’d followed the efforts of this band starting around the third album and I mention this because by 2014 they’d spent quite a lot of effort reporting on the creation of a sixth album and seemingly completed it back then. That record, which featured the return of Mike van Mastrigt vocalist must’ve been fully tracked at the time but they’d eventually gone silent on it. In 2019 they’d finally posted a few “demo” versions of songs from those sessions allowing us to confirm that ‘Sentinel Beast‘ is basically what they’d recorded a decade ago, though they’ve provided no information as to when the final render, mix/master and all of that occurred. At the very least we can suggest that much of this album’s material was written and possible tracked in full back in 2014 though they’d either shelved or not fully completed it. This is neither here nor there when examining the music itself, a straightforward hammer of a brutal death metal album with classic death metal inspiration (“Echoes of Anguish”) at its core, but provides some provenance as to when and where these songs came about (i.e. this is not a pandemic spawned comeback).

The first impression ‘Sentinel Beast‘ makes is cheap, out of touch with its sub-standard (possibly AI generated?) album artwork. To be fair, apart from a couple of extremely class Jon Zig paintings early on their aesthetic presentation has never been a major focus. The consistent identity of the band can be trusted though as we shotgun into opener “Burning Dogma” and find the a volatile and instantly extreme clap into their battered firestorm of percussive riffcraft befitting of their initial place in history, clipping into to standards deployed by peak late 2000’s albums from bands like Supreme Pain and Prostitute Disfigurement (see: ‘Descendants of Depravity‘) where one could hear the high standards of mid-90’s Florida and New York death metal informing their attack on a basal level but the generations beyond had doubled the severity of their attack. If you are already familiar with the band the title track (“Sentinel Beast”) very much feels like it’d been pulled from the era of bands like Centurian whereas a ~two minute song like “Warmonger” or “Dismal Depravity” inject that exact energy with less thoughtfully placed arrangements. The first half of this album proves itself as exciting, brutal and riff-driven in its muse but already begins dragging in its grooves (“King of Madness”) showing there are still some elements from the last two albums very much alive within this one. None of this is a big or surprising amount of change.

The second half of ‘Sentinel Beast‘ begins somewhere around one of its best earlier Deeds-style songs “Ruin of Man” (see also: “Paradise Falls”) and for my own taste this is where the mid-paced stuff kinda starts to convince outside of militaristic blasts. A lot of the best traits of Dutch death metal carry through that piece from moment to moment and overall I’d found it to be one of the most representative songs as to what these folks are capable of today (or, back in 2014?). “Echoes of Anguish” yanks on this thread a bit longer blending ‘old school’ death metal grooves at mid-pace with bursts of brutality that don’t necessarily live up to the wall to wall blasts expected overall but make for an easy highlight on the full listen. Not sure if the vocals on this song are all van Mastrigt or if there is a guest vocalist on that song but the overall effect is probably as close to ‘Hate‘-era Sinister as Houwitser ever got from my point of view. While the full listen offers plenty of variety in pacing and bears a long history of death metal interest at its fingertips the whole of ‘Sentinel Beast‘ feels just as cohesive and on a roll as any of their past releases with the only major difference being that they’d slowed down and hit upon some classicist thrashing death metal moments here and there.

Much as I’d wanted ‘Sentinel Beast‘ to stick around in rotation, again we don’t get a lot of records in this straightforward style with any real taste applied to the riffs very often, the aesthetic was a moderate drawback and there were only a few songs that’d had me coming back to take a closer listen for the hell of it. If your interest is squarely set upon ‘old school’ death metal and its evolution toward brutal death metal in the early post-millennial era a band like Houwitser still hold true and consistent appeal to those parties and this album in particular does a fine job representing their past and present work. A moderate recommendation.

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