Waking up a decade-plus removed from their most recent devilish hallucinations Salvador, Brazil-borne death metal quartet HEADHUNTER D.C. return to remind us that death is certain by way of their sixth portal to the wails and screams of the damned. Though this latest full-length album, ‘Rise of the Damned…‘, is temporally far removed from their last work (and largely restaffed, too) it is nonetheless reasonable continuation of their late 80’s built and still enduring voice. It may not be their most brutal or thrashing work to date, their riffs haven’t upped the ante in any sense, but it does effectively communicate the long history of the band and their name’s enduring fealty to the cause.

Active for just few months shy of four decades Headhunter Death Cult are one of the more underrated death metal bands of deep underground Brazilian legendry. The original quartet line-up stuck together for most of their original Cogumelo released run from 1987-1993 inciting a form of thrashing death metal often overlooked by revisionists for its raw production values. Longtime readers might recall I’d included their second LP (‘Punishment at Dawn‘, 1993) on a list of supremely underrated death metal back in 2011, counting it among my favorites of that era of Brazilian extreme metal for its dark, repetitious riff-focused sound. Whether you are seeking the wisdom of the ancients or just cutting back through their discography for quick context I’d recommend the depth of their second album as a first impression compared to the wartime inconsistencies of their debut (‘Born…Suffer…Die‘, 1991), which I love but carries more of a maniac 80’s death metal spirit per its Possessed, Kreator and grindcore inspired assaults. That classic era remains awesome in its own right but the band’s less prolific post-millennium evolution sets clearest expectations for their return.

In the age of Krisiun‘s heightened popularity and brutal death’s worldwide uptick Headhunter D.C. took on a more extreme attack, still representing the ‘old school’ Florida death metal base to some degree on ‘…and the Sky Turns to Black… (The Dark Age Has Come)‘ (2000) but incorporating some keyboards, acoustic guitar, spoken word, and maybe even some blackened death ideas (re: early Acheron, Vital Remains) as founding guitarist Paulo Lisboa had been playing in Mystifier since about 1996. I discovered the band through the 2005 reissue of that album which’d included several covers of classic thrash and death songs. Those ideas were tightened up on their follow-up, the underrated ‘God’s Spreading Cancer‘ (2007) several years later as we began to see their work become less prolific over time. The last time I wrote about the band was 2012 when I’d included ‘…In Unholy Mourning…‘ (2012) at #17 on my Best of the Year list, it was probably their biggest production, best album art and tightest playing of that era. Three live albums, a covers compilation, a split Bathory tribute and fourteen years later they’ve returned with an entirely new line-up and a sixth full-length album.

With the exit of Lisboa and his distinct years-evolved style of riffcraft in 2017 most of the post-2000 era lineup soon followed, leaving the anchors of ‘Rise of the Damned…‘ as (now former) longtime drummer Daniel Brandão and more recently joined Malefactor guitarist Danilo Coimbra. I’m not sure how confident I am in their sensibilities, most of their current bands use AI generated art for covers and that is always a bad sign, but some of the rhythmic signature of Headhunter D.C. appears to remain and of course vocalist Sérgio Baloff has long been a larger-than-life presence on his own. Baloff‘s concept for the Marcos Miller illustrated cover art sends the right message otherwise but I was not sure what to expect from the return of the band beyond such pronounced change in their ranks.

Beyond the victory lap afforded by “In Death Metal We Trust” and “…40 Years Deathmarch” the majority of ‘Rise of the Damned…‘ concerns itself with a mix of the blasting and thrashing death metal Headhunter D.C. are known for, a crossing of wires between the late 80’s/early 90’s tenets of the sub-genre and the percussive hustle of the post-millennium alike. Pinch harmonic-tipped movement, varied pace, doomed turns, some speed-metallic whipping and a few groove metal riffs work their way into most songs (re: opener “Unblessed by the Unsacred”) ensuring that the full listen is restless in its greater thread. A quick rip through the first four songs on the album make it clear enough that Coimbra understands the riff language Lisboa established, achieving similar cadence to some of their 2000’s released records without surpassing that level of creativity carve.

With the exception of some of the shredding bits at the end of the song “No Salvation From Above” is a particularly apt study of the essence of Headhunter D.C. in a sort of retrospective capture where wobbly speed ’til death metal movement is exaggerated within ever-shifting stakes. Plenty of whammy scrambling leads and flair help to finesse through their action on that piece but it is the blasted-out portions of the song which truly remind of the band’s post-90’s history. That said I don’t know if any of this material is outright memorable ’til we hit “Burn the Book of Lies”, a blasphemic hail-and-kill moment which (alongside “Gospel of Doom”) hit kind of like a certain era of Vader as they chop through. It is a strong start but ‘Rise of the Damned…‘ loses focus as a host of ~2-3 minute pieces fail to cohere within the second half of the album.

“The Dysangelist” is probably the worst of the lot, essentially one big grooved-out riff repeated for a couple of minutes, and I’d say similar things of “Praeludium Ad Ascensionem Haereticorum” if it weren’t a disembodied intro for the title track which comes right after. This stirs up the one main criticism I have of this album in that I’d felt no real struggle within these rhythms, very little in the way of arm-exploding extremism applied to the riffcraft itself and as a result several songs come across somewhat sleepy (particularly “Rise of the Damned”) next to sharper buzzers like “Possessed, Obsessed”. Even still Headhunter D.C.‘s riffs largely read as functional rather than skull-smoking death, their collective effect ends up feeling like a partial parody of the band rather than their usual dark cloud through the ages.

The long-awaited return of Headhunter D.C. functionally reprises the spirit of the band, brings much of their signature intensity to these works and ultimately delivers a solid enough Brazilian death metal album in good service to their underground legacy. Most (not all) of ‘Rise of the Damned…‘ gets this right and I think it will be clear from the first listen which songs are worthy of a live set and which are merely filling in the album experience and its greater diabolic flow. Some of the elite, obscure sensibility of their discography is lost here per my own experience but the work itself is fine enough to represent their name. A moderately high recommendation.

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