Glowing alight with emerald slime, breathing deep of the swamp air and plugging ears abuzz with the chittering of vermin Prague, Czechia-based death metal quintet SNĚŤ plumb surreal and the grotesque landscape on their crooked walk through altered states of mind per this sublime sophomore full-length album. Hammer-weighted but slurring in its depiction of nightmarish consciousness ‘V bažinách vědomí‘ barrels with no less confidence than the band’s debut yet achieves a far fuller-fleshed mutation. Granting the unprepared ear with a spike of roaring immerse, an uptick in riffs and overall sharper tempered production values offers a best possible scenario for a nowadays ‘old school’ death metal band reaching for caustic idyll in escalation.

Sněť formed back in 2018 by way of folks heavily soaked in local crust, metalpunk, grindcore and related scenery collectively aiming to create rotten ‘old school’ death metal inspired sounds. Taking on the frothy, gunked atmosphere of groups like Mortiferum and Phrenelith and giving it a quicker cut, simpler design a la Undergang the band’s first demo tape (‘Promo‘, 2019) was short but communicated their intent as a doomed, estranged type of roaring crud. Captured by the fundaments of circa ’91 Autopsy and Carcass their work was a pretty easy grab when Blood Harvest released their debut LP (‘Mokvání V Okovech‘, 2021) soon after, a record full of nastier grooves, doom and gloom. Upon review I’d suggested the substance of their work, particularly in terms of knotting together riffcraft, was solid in bursts but not yet fully developed, leaving explosive aesthetics and performance to carry the load. It was a notable if not brutally short debut that’d left me stoked on whatever they’d manage next.

While Sněť ‘s song for their split 7″ with Grave Infestation (2023) followed closely with the style of their debut the two included on their split 7″ with Sequestrum (2024) seem to have pointed closer to what they’ve developed on ‘V bažinách vědomí‘ today as they increase the density of both riffcraft and atmospheric hoark. This makes a ton of sense in sequence as they’d had the right sound, aesthetic and all of that but with this second album they’ve generally refined their action into greater putridity and disarray. The ‘Necroticism…‘-adept crunch into opener “Tíha světů” and the tightly wound series of riffs which follow make this next level of refinement immediately clear while also setting a standard upheld throughout the full listen.

Bigger production values, deeper roars, quicker riff changes and some of my favorite album art in recent memory feed into a unified vision and tonally uniform work which manifests its hottest action within a thousand sidebars. ‘V bažinách vědomí‘ thrives within the riff, sure, but what makes the whole deal a mind-bending sojourn comes with the invaginations within the general ‘old school’ death metal creep Sněť‘ve enforced here, movements which distract then ultimately circle back into their main subject to the point of surreal waft between brutality and stymied escaping thoughts. The ‘Primordial Malignity‘-esque trench and groove through “Kladivo ve tmě” provides one of the more binary examples of these easier transitioning motions and “Ve stínu slunce” (and “Nekončící koloběh snění a probouzení” later on) arguably takes it furthest into the unknown, almost losing place amidst the ever-shifting walls in surround. The latter piece also notably introduces the first of a few drops into spoken word on the album, adding a slow drip of fatal despondency to the full listen.

The contiguous, slime-ridden cohesion of the entire ten-song listen (+ the language barrier) made it hard to sit down and yank song names and riff-specific moments from the slurry of it all but ‘V bažinách vědomí‘ generally starts strong and finishes strong. Whenever they veer into ‘Unholy Cult‘-like scrambling riffs, such as those which drive the first half of “Dřevěný kůl”, Sněť offer a kind of mind-bristling level severe USDM, Finndeath squalor and their own ranting weirdness. “Nature” is the simplest triangulation of elements here with its repetitious grinding opening riffs and the swagger-out it serves in the second half. Taken piecemeal many of these songs are simply too entrenched in their own flow to stand out but taken as a part of the greater organism each adds its own wriggling feature to the experience. Those ‘ready aligned with the depths of the death metal psych will feel the existential panic of “Apokalyptický smaragd budoucí doby”, the strange release of “Nekončící koloběh snění a probouzení” and the paranoid alienation of “Jako každý” readily on the roll through.

There’d been no doubt Sněť were above-average beforehand, particularly with consideration for aesthetic and sonic curation, but they’ve surprised in their push far beyond the incomplete, slumping thought of their first album. With the haunted clobber and saunter through ‘V bažinách vědomí‘ the quintet’s craft achieves a doubly sentient level of morbid ‘old school’ inspired death metal mechanism which’d appreciated in estranged depth with each listen, summoning infectious tunnel-vision on every pass. A very high recommendation.

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