Flattening all that they encounter and plastered in a prime shade of deep red for all of the gore and rust accumulated on their path Herne, Germany-based death metal quintet RECKLESS MANSLAUGHTER resemble an additive monstrosity, carnage-bound machinery that is rich with bloody experience on this strongly varied fourth full-length album. ‘Sinking Into Filth‘ feels like an entirely appropriate congealed mass of over a decade and a half spent honing their own version of death metal which is impossible to slot directly into one niche or another beyond some level of classic temperament. This particular album begins at a king of the mountain level station and eventually takes the ride down from brutality to nigh death-doomed status along the way, making sure to deliver riff-after-riff in descent. Overall it is the most varied and best arranged release from the band to date and an imposing, entertaining death metal record from start to finish.

Reckless Manslaughter formed in late 2008 playing a brutal death metal and deathgrind influenced style of death metal complete with pinging snare, spastic bursts of energy, and an altogether vicious first impression made via their first demo CD-r (‘Promo 2010‘, 2010). Thanks to pretty quick turnaround they made good on that demo’s intensity very quickly with an uncompromised self-released debut LP (‘Storm of Vengeance‘, 2011) which was notably mixed/mastered by Dan Swanö and gave depth to those bouncing and thrashing songs on the promo CD. The wild thing about that first album was the all-in energy steaming off of it you could feel the band’s intensity wasn’t just brutal and over the top with its rattling snare treatments and jutting breaks into semi-melodic riffs but that they weren’t necessarily interested in fitting into the ‘new old school’ trend, or trying to sound like any specific band and mostly focused on their own sound. The important note to take is that their earliest work felt like, acted like, and sounded like underground death metal at a time where a lot of their surroundings were becoming increasingly mainstream, saleable.

After adding a second guitarist in 2012 Reckless Manslaughter‘s sense of rhythmic precision had been the major improvement on album number two (‘Blast Into Oblivion‘, 2013) which’d followed a couple of years later and employed most of the same crew otherwise. While the brutality was still there the loss of sloppier movement edged their sound into more typical territory and for me the original grinding magic of the band was at least halfway polished out. The way I saw it at the time was that they’d began as something along the lines of Keitzer but seemed ready to do something closer to Obscure Infinity by the second album but they were quite there (re: “Iron Casket”). Elements of Immolation-esque gloom and drowned Finnish death metal mystique had crept into their sound by the time their much-improved demo tape (‘Onwards Into Darkness‘, 2017) had released and this was echoed on their F.D.A. Records released third LP (‘Caverns of Perdition‘, 2019) which I’d praised for the elements of Bolt Thrower and early Cryptopsy to be explored on that album’s broad-minded approach. After returning to this band’s discography I’d found their work was largely additive, pulling in experiences gained over time and pooling them together in creating increasingly dynamic releases capable of a broad spectrum of classic death metal traits, not unlike the all-in vision of Sinister in more recent years.

The spank of the snare, the droning launch of their riffs and a deeply-set growl gather as signifiers of Reckless Manslaughter‘s path over time as we sink into the molten black tirade of opener “Caverns of Perdition” and feel the shuddering push of the bass guitar in action. An (eventual) whipping ping-blast of the drums helps to recall the eldest signature of the band’s work and ensures the listener has an upfront sense of the wild, sometimes unpredictable style they’ve long carried with despite the mulling, slow burning tide of the opener. The next several songs are roughly ~3 minutes a piece and hammer much harder at the skull with “Befouled Commandments” sounding like a mid-to-late 90’s brutal death metal band at their prime (a la ‘Blasphemy Made Flesh‘) once again highlighting the piece with over the top drumming and dark atmosphere. The tone of these songs all lands imperious, directly mayhemic in its strike and the first impression is a serious death metal crew with a unique set of influences feeding into their brutality.

“Retreat Into Nothingness” is arguably where their interest in Finnish death metal creeps up loudest, and not necessarily the ‘The Gloomy Reflection Of Our Hidden Sorrows‘ type of configuration but a slow-to-mid paced creep which sets vocalist Leimy glowering over the guitar work a la late 90’s Incantation. The first half of the album technically concludes somewhere around the hanging-dead grooves of “Aktion 1005” and it’d been around this point in the full listen where I’d gotten a feeling for how attentive Reckless Manslaughter had been in consideration for the flow of the album track-by-track wherein that song’d felt like a natural collection of all they’d covered up ’til that point and a showcase for everything they do in unique stance. It’d all come together and made sense at that point, more-or-less.

There was yet some death-doom metal dread to cast (“Ruf der Leere”), a cover from a not-so well known death-thrash metal band Diabolical Imperium picks up the pace and such but I figure most folks will be curious about the ~10.5 minute closer “Risen from the Mass Grave”. It is an extended death-doom metal piece in some sense, a slow-groaning and droning song that helps emphasize how different our destination is beyond where we’d started yet the cycle just as well repeats with good sense; As a full listen ‘Sinking Into Filth‘ does just that, takes its first steps into skull-grinding death wallop unto wrathful doomed resonance, offering a path through aggression toward disintegration. On their way through they’ve done a great job of flexing all that they’ve become capable of over the years, running the gamut in an entertaining way as we step from foreshadowing gloom to brazen aggression ’til leering dread. The snare-throttling stuff caught my attention first, the shorter clip of the mid-album songs held my attention riff-by-riff and the slower pacing towards the end (save the cover song) gave the whole deal some additional burning time.

For an ‘old school’ feeling group Reckless Manslaughter have met a very high standard with the greater dynamic of their gig on display here, the only thing that’d been missing for me was at least one song that infected my brain and stuck with me. Otherwise the production values are appropriately set to thunderous filth without obfuscating the performances within and the art direction (cover art courtesy of Lucas Korte / Shoggoth Kinetics) likewise meets an incredibly strong standard which matches up with the intent of the band brilliantly. A high recommendation.

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