126th part of the short reviews.
TRIA PRIMA – The Mortificatio
Year: 2025
Label: Nocturnus Records
Rating: 7,5 / 10
A new Ukrainian band featuring my old buddy Metal Priest. Conventionally, it can be described as melodic Thrash / Death Metal with a lot of traditional commercial metal elements, but with a completely unconventional alchemical theme. Virtuoso solos, keys, alternating growl with the ”operatic" female vocals of a photo model vocalist, and so on. The album sounds very good, professional, diverse - no worse than THERION or something. On the other hand, it's not my cup of tea at all, so I can't understand all the nuances.
FILTH – Time to Rot
Year: 2025
Label: Rotted Life Records
Rating: 4 / 10
Another super-heavy Death Metal with the characteristic sound of the "new wave of the old school". Nothing says anything about the Swedish origin of the band; I've heard the same thing from Americans, Spaniards, Finns, and Australians... As usual, there are some interesting fragments between the minutes of boredom, but the album's sound is not just something unoriginal – it's plain identical to hundreds of similar albums that I listened to for Bagnik Zine during last 10 years or so. Enough is enough.
TUBAL CAIN – Slime Abyss
Year: 2025
Label: Darkness Shall Rise Records
Rating: 6 / 10
Traditional Heavy /Thrash/ Speed Metal with a minimal dose of extremity and and zany female vocals. Some kind of hack on the Metal Archives labeled the band as Black Metal, and all I can say here is that nowadays all music with guitars seems to be considered Black Metal, and sometimes even those guitars are not needed... In short, here we have half an hour of pretty melodic sound that was described in the press release as "Raw School Street Metal". I totally agree: TUBAL CAIN really conjures up images of street metal punks from the 80s – with sunglasses, leather jackets, studded bracelets, and so on. There are a lot of potentially great moments here, but for me, everything is ruined by silly vocals and a fucking trebly sound that completely lacks emphasis on any individual elements. Once again, I notice that Danny from DSR shows much worse taste in releasing rather than in re-releasing.
FESSUS / KILL THE LORD – Decrowned II: Trinity Ablaze / Pilgrims of Morbidity
Year: 2025
Label: Darkness Shall Rise Records
Rating: 6,3 / 10
The "new wave of old-school death metal" again. But at least there are some decent songs here. FESSUS feels very good in the ancient mid-tempo doom/Death rhythms a la AUTOPSY, and KILL THE LORD gives a cheerful Swedish style. The vocals in this band are performed by Andreas Kaufmann who sang in IMPENDING DOOM. Both bands were recorded in the same boring sound that I mentioned in review of FILTH above, but the mastering was handled by two grands here – Patrick Engel and Dan Swano. Therefore, both FESSUS and KILL THE LORD have at least a small drop of originality, which makes this split worthy of listening.
PHENOCRYST – Cremation Pyre
Year: 2024
Label: Blood Harvest
Rating: 5,7 / 10
Portuguese Death Metal about volcanoes – why not! It's very good at aggressive and fast moments, but it's almost as boring as the whole "new wave..." (I won't repeat myself for the third time today) at the rest. The spiritual influence of BOLT THROWER and BENEDICTION is felt. The guitar leads and solos are also noteworthy, but not the entire album as a whole.
