Out to ride the wheel rather than reinvent its bludgeoning roll this sophomore full-length album from New York, New York-based death metal quintet GLORIOUS DEPRAVITY sports hotly juiced production values, an ideal audiovisual presentation for their clean-cut and wholly prescribed ‘old school’ inspired action. While there is no gloom, doom or any truly sinister haul within its dense and moshable form ‘Death Never Sleeps‘ makes too-easy work of the 90’s death metal zeitgeist in its later-stage gloss as a series of quickly burned through yet moshable pieces. Despite lacking much of the impassioned, competitively volatile struggle of the classics era these folks approximate near enough that their undeniably pro-level take should prove a neck whipper for the average pure death metal fandom.

Glorious Depravity formed between guitarist Matt Mewton (Belus) and drummer Chris Grigg (Woe) around 2016 as a potential death metal side project between their fellow brogrammers before eventually expanding to a quintet including folks from Pyrrhon, ex-Mutilation Rites, and Gravesend. Because these are generally professional folks who’ve been in some fairly well received bands over the years they’d shown up so well prepared that their pandemic-released debut LP (‘Ageless Violence‘, 2020) definitely came across prescribed rather than inspired. It was yet a fine study of the early-to-mid 90’s death metal zeitgeist at peak popularity where shades of the usual suspects found their way into much of their riff-focused action creating an amped Deicide-esque intensity a la groove laden early 2000’s Polish death metal. I don’t know if they fully had their songcraft locked into something special at the time but it was an approachable, above average sub-half hour set at the time. After nearly five years expectations for album number two basically lined up as such, a “new old school” death metal record focused on the right look and sound with some of the knack required in hand.

Loud, cold, and brutally cut the sound design conceived for ‘Death Never Sleeps‘ comes from folks responsible for records by bands like Cognitive, Xoth and The Black Dahlia Murder (among many others) where it does carry a sort of bombastic deathcore apropos wallop, especially with consideration for the drum production. While this makes for a spongey and zany wrack to start the level of loudness applied here doesn’t fall that far from the crush of more recent Skeletal Remains, a fair golden standard for general audiences approved death metal these days. This ends up working in the band’s favor as their material immediately feels maximally struck and brutal in its slap-and-drop handed battery. With that said none of this would be worth talking about if Glorious Depravity hadn’t made some serious strides in crafting an actual death metal record which is even more centered around riffcraft and rhythmic action than its predecessor. They’ve got riffs, they’re shredding through ’em relentlessly throughout the full listen and in this way they’ve approximated something akin to 90’s death metal ‘tude outright.

The evidence is already stacking up here: These aren’t dummies and their riffs aren’t dummy shit for 2025 or even 1995 for that matter. Point being that it was hard to shove this record aside as a big dumb thing once I’d taken a closer ear to its action. I don’t know if you should be all-caps commenting how hard the grooves they’ve dragged through opener “Slaughter the Gerontocrats” slap… but it does feel like this album seats Glorious Depravity closer to the standard of a band like Monstrosity (alternately, Sinister) than the average dryly produced, barely sentient hardcore inspired death metal band today. I’m not saying those riffs could’ve hit on ‘Millennium‘ or whatever but that their thread hits without sacrificing intensity, speed, or structure for the sake of its moshable NYDM qualities. Otherwise the standard is more-or-less set by that opener as the majority of the songs found on ‘Death Never Sleeps‘ land around the ~3-4 minute mark and follow similar patternation.

Glorious Depravity basically ride that off-the-top momentum from that point, trading between quicker moshable material and more focused death metal songs in alternation. The dig-and-slide grooves found on follow-up “Stripmined Flesh Extractor” go for a far simpler strategy, ducking into their grinding verse riffs for at least half the song while still finding some manner of hook within its bashed-in wheeling. Quick but dense burner “Sulphrous Winds (Howling Through Christendom)” was the piece to first cut through the droning battery of it all as they’d scratch through a number of off-the-cuff riffs and an inadvisably loose guitar solo, a rare bout of recklessness within an album set to take an even more focused turn as Side B is no less zoned in; While I don’t think they’re hitting full-on death/thrash metal tics here in any sense the peak value found on ‘Death Never Sleeps‘ comes from pieces which stretch closer to four minutes (incl. the title track, “Slaughter the Gerontocrats”, and “Scourged by the Wings of the Fell Destroyer”) or simply carry some manner of throttled and thrashing/grinding edge (re: “Necrobiotic Enslavement“).

The immersive value of ‘Death Never Sleeps‘ paired with an increasing riff count overrides its overall sense of sameness to some degree, and no doubt vocalist Doug Moore‘s rasped and roared performance here helps to bring some additional personality to these groove-forward, not entirely tuneless variations. In this way Glorious Depravity achieve some level of tunnel vision enjoyed by authentic ‘old school’ death metal though I’d say their focus on brevity and (at times) simplicity of effect betrays the competitive ramping of composition which’d characterized 90’s death metal for the sake of loosened, groove-heavy action. While I don’t think I could successfully argue that the band’s second LP is anything less than solid, above average stuff I don’t know if they’re a hundred percent nailed it in terms of creating a real thrill-after-thrill event. It is otherwise a fine example of building upon canon which carries an appreciably exaggerative yet approachable result. A moderately high recommendation.

---