Reemerging as a daemonic force driven to defy the flesh, the second coming of Puerto Montt, Chile-based death metal quartet SEPULCRUM only intensifies their barrage on this ripping and tearing sophomore full-length album. The coagulation of ‘old school’ North-meets-South American death metal’s peaking acumen that has long characterized their sound escalates both in aggression and finesse on ‘Lacerator‘, a psychotic riff driven album with a great bulging brain willing its vitriol into mayhem. Any fan of late 80’s/early 90’s death metal with a marked obsession with the riff will devour the bloody sacrifice on offer here outright and find a matured but no less frenzied depth in their craft.

Sepulcrum formed back in 2019 between folks known for their work in death metal bands Horrifying, Hallux Valgus, and Exinteratus (among others) seeking to manifest the chaos of the moderne psyche within uncompromising dark ‘old school’ death metal. Created as a classicist entity per a reasonable technical standard enforced their work echoed the late 80’s ’til early 90’s Floridian scenery loudest as they’d generated a strong EP (‘Corpse Dividing Holes‘, 2020) and a debut full-length album in a short period of time before facing delays on the latter per the pandemia of the time. When their 2021 recorded first LP (‘Lamentation of Immolated Souls‘, 2023) did release it’d been deeply considered beyond traditionalist fare, a clear leap in compositional interest featuring strong attention paid to lyrical themes and its North-meets-South thrashing riffs. Viewing death as the consumer of life, a form of endless suffering set to perpetuate itself ’til total entropy, gave the album admirable vision but it was the riff-obsessed thrashing mania of their work that’d made it a total package in review. At the time I’d placed the quartet’s work somewhere nearby the higher echelon of (earlier) Morbid Angel inspired groups with praise for the rabid yet intricate death-thrashing riffcraft expressed within.

As a follow-up ‘Lacerator‘ eclipses most all expectations set by ‘Lamentation of Immolated Souls‘ wherein the same general fandom is evident in their songcraft but the detailing hand itself is elevated, strongarmed into a Sepulcrum specific voice. As you press beyond the introductory solo that cracks into opener/title track “Lacerator” you’ll feel a psychic meld of Death’s ‘Human‘ extended into the ferality of ‘Thy Kingdom Come‘ b/w ‘God Died on His Knees‘ era pure death metal diction (re: ‘Imperial Doom‘, ‘Retribution‘), and one could probably extract plenty more from the barrage of high-count riffs that ensue but the point to make here is the perceived stylistic glom achieved isn’t rote and ultimately takes on a thrashing, often intricate yet brutal energy of its own. It is the sort of opener that deserves a thumb on the ‘repeat one’ button for a handful of cycles before moving on outright.

As soon as “The Seven Gates” hit beyond the opener and found its moshable, full bodied neck wrencher of a verse riff (~28 seconds in) it became lodged in mind. It may just be a quick chugger of a riff but it’d carried motion up front, eventually building an intense groove from that framework throughout. The song also notably includes an extended bass guitar solo, via Nicolás Espinoza, rather than a lead guitar strike as its main feature, an incredible moment when set next to the Mortem (Peru)-esque battery and scrambling violence of their approach; The bass presence was already keen on Sepulcrum‘s first album but here they reach for a sublime mix of clattering tonal physicality and virtuosic insertion into their otherwise aggressive push. Those first two songs had me buying the album within minutes and, as it turns out, the whole thing smokes just as hard throughout its ~37 minute stretch.

Placed somewhere in between the verbose rasp of Sarcasm (re: “Let Me Desecrate You”) and Dave Vincent‘s pre-’93 barks guitarist/vocalist Nicolás Miranda‘s rasping vocal style feels like more of a strength this time around, by expanded expression or just raw takes. This is more notable around “Into the Infected Bowels”, the most myriad-in-reference song on the album from my point of view. The death-thrashing trample of its introduction steadily scales up into more percussive territory, veers into Schuldiner-esque runs, drops into a shredding early 90’s Obituary shove before pushing back towards the opener’s reprise all while picking up where they’d left off after “The Seven Gates”; There are more details, or just riffs, than is necessary to comment on here but it is worth paying closer attention to the moment-to-moment on ‘Lacerator‘ as Sepulcrum generate their own OSDM vocabulary, slipping between late 80’s death/thrash, early 90’s prog-death, and ‘Human‘-esque brutality with great finesse.

The second half of ‘Lacerator‘ repeats the successes of the first as Sepulcrum jettison themselves into what I’d argue is even more of a signature signpost for their style in the span of the final four songs included. The blasting and thrashing “Phrenetic Psychophony” is a firestarter just as the title track was but the final three songs quickly outpace that work via the elaborate presentation of “Entropic Decomposition” being a strong outlier on the full listen and the pairing of “Let me Desecrate You” b/w closer “Multideformation” being a strong endpoint for it. Not only is the latter the right note to go out on but I’d enjoyed how it explores some more exaggerative bass guitar movement/interplay alongside series of lead guitar solos (via guitarist Oscar Gibert) trading off as the album steadily plays out. The first half of the record has a lot of its flash and ripping riffcraft whereas I’d felt they pushed the compositional side of things on the second half. The album loses a bit of its tonal focus along that path but usually for the sake of keeping the aggressive pummel and stab of it all at a killing pace.

From the authentic ‘old school’ feeling production values to the primal bleed of the cover artwork (via Nox Fragor Art) every hand touching the sound and aesthetic of ‘Lacerator‘ reflects above average consideration for the standards of old, and without sounding like plain facsimilia or worship. This paired with the performances and authorship afforded reads as a leap forward in characterization for Sepulcrum which doesn’t deign leave behind their ‘old school’ death metal spiritus. It was the riffs that’d drawn me in and sat me down for the first couple dozen listens to this record but the finer sonic details, themes, and violent yet intelligent scrape of their work that’d ultimately stuck in mind. A very high recommendation.

---