Staring into the infinite morbidity of the abyss and rushing head-on into it Singapore-based death metalpunk quartet DOLDREY return for their latest EP, a refinement and continuation of the momentum stirred by their recent debut full-length. Rooted in classic street punk wrath but functionally a death-thrash metal beast there is both tradition and abstraction in the portal they’ve opened in recent years, giving us their most kicking and erratically charged release to date with ‘Only Death is Eternal‘. Each of these five songs makes an effort to count, leave a dent in the minds of folks who see the potential ouroboric fusion possible within extreme metal and classic hardcore punk forms, muses which are far more effective when the artist delves deeper than the surface level of each. It is rare to land upon an artist sourcing potential energy from this particular combination of forms and making such worthwhile diabolism of it.

At this point you should know who these fellowes are if you’re in tune with the legit spectrum of underground extreme metalpunk today as the band’ve been well-noted since forming in 2018. It wasn’t that long ago that I was staring down the barrel of Doldrey‘s debut album (‘Celestial Deconstruction‘, 2022) in review and figuring my way through what was different about that album as they’d stepped beyond their demo and EP days in the late 2010’s and put their dukes up. The main thing to note was a combination of street punk informed death/thrash metal which’d had some interest in the death-crust phenom (early Bombs of Hades, for example) as much as it might’ve appealed to a fan of the Power Trip (and especially Black Breath) intensified connection made between death metal heaviness and thrashing metalpunk old and new. They were meaner, heavier and all the more biting in their riff-driven approach thanks to shedding some of that HM-2 soaked buzz and sharpening their tone to a violent intensity that’d begin to step beyond the simpler d-beaten crust side of things into the realm of thrash-toned grinding.

In that sense the actual sound of ‘Only Death is Eternal‘ is built from the same hands and ears (engineer + mix via Izzad Kadzali Shah @ Dungeon 416 and mastering via Will Killingsworth @ Dead Air Studios) who have continued to shape the band’s on-record presence by leaving behind some (not all) of the bass-heavy scoop of their LP, taking on even more nuclear overdrive while letting the bass guitar tank through louder. This gives this ~21 minute song album more of a thrashing stab, a harder clap to its riff-obsessed strokes as their restless, neck-whipping movement continues down an adrenaline spraying path; Though the sound of this record builds on the merits of their debut I’d say the best thing about Doldrey‘s work has been a constant since day one in that their thrashed-at rhythms continue to find ways to keep the “extreme metal approach to metalpunk” idea from getting lost in its chugs, moving with absolute dynamism which any fan of hardcore punk and crossover/metalpunk of a certain era will appreciate, at least if you’re willing go as heavy as records like ‘Slaves Beyond Death‘ or, say, early 90’s Rose Rose.

Doldrey don’t waste time cutting into opener “Moral Decay” beyond a whammy slapping buzz of an intro before chopping into their riffcraft, turning on a dime twice within the first two minutes as the death-attuned thresher they start with sours into a death-doomed slow motion roar. The flow of moment to moment, riff to riff here is experting stuff where each transition not only makes great sense but showcases the meshing of stylistic inspiration as it has evolved over the last several years. We are definitely getting underground death metal from this song, an ‘old school’ rocket launcher with a punk beat or four, but one that has a brilliant mind for intensity of thrash metal, too. They’re more-or-less in this mode for each of these four songs though we get more of a Swedish crust/Exploited snap and gallop on the title track (“Only Death is Eternal”) and the shorter burner “All is Hell”. From my perspective there are metal bands that don’t really get the hardcore punk/metalpunk canon and there are punk bands that don’t quite get the dark fumes of extreme metal in any serious sense and a band like this is clearly equally knowledgeable and specific in their taste in each realm, a rare feat which shows in every song.

For my own taste this EP only gets better as it rolls on into its final two songs, starting with the heavier dread and bounding rhythm of standout “Societal Machine” and I think this is where my suggestion of modern Texan crossover heft showing up in their sound is more valid. The kinetic thrust of the main verse riff and the way it shifts between many modes impressed me most but at that point I could simply appreciate the range Doldrey were showing on this record, stepping further into their beyond face value take on metalpunk. Otherwise I would say the song that’d thrilled my brains most beyond the opener was the final song, “Keres” and for the same reasons, it goes places fast and ends up digging deeper into the thrashing, crusted rhythms available to death metal in a way which somehow finds a path to like, early Excel level riffs as it ends. It was/is a particularly strong finisher from my point of view, anyhow.

Of course you’ve gathered by now that I found this release above-average in terms of its core mechanism and the authorship of its rhythms and I don’t actually have any reasonably negative feedback here. I’d found this was exactly the sort of focused, chiseled-out follow up an album like ‘Celestial Deconstruction‘ needed and it feels like they’ve tightened up their songcraft to the point where every moment is a blitz with just enough room to breathe and hit some heavier chunking, moshable steps along the way. The album has been curated to the nth degree otherwise with a particularly wild cover artwork by way of Alexander Brown which features ultra-fine pointillism to the point of an airbrushed smoothness which makes great use of busied yet still shapely negative space. The imagery is visceral, morbid and chaotic which is certainly the right way to introduce Doldrey‘s music. The whole of the booklet otherwise features more symbolic pieces, illustrations which make the booklet/innards stare-worthy from page to page, flap to flap. With all of this considered I don’t know how much more venomous and potently stated these folks could be than this, it most definitely feels like a high point in a series of excellent decisions made. A very high recommendation.

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