Greetings, Hellions. It’s Death’s Door. Everything outside fucking sucks. Thankfully, the death metal does not. Praise be.
This month we offer a small sampling of our favorites from March. It’s been an interesting opening quarter for the genre, with more high profile releases on the way as the year progresses. But for now we have plenty of deliciousness to consume, so dig in.
Death metal. Forever.
-JA
Cream of the Crop
Gutvoid - Liminal Shrines
The Ecclesiastical adage of there being nothing new under the sun finds its closest musical corollary, at least in my estimation, within the realm of the current death metal landscape. It’s also not at all an inherent negative. The OSDM revival of the last decade plus has produced some of the nastiest, filthiest, and finest death metal in the genre’s history. On a less biblical note… if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it amirite? Canada’s Gutvoid fits into this mold of OSDM revivalists, serving up some cosmically-tinged death-doom that honors the genre’s forebears (a few in particular which we’ll get into later) while creating enough distinction to be recognizably themselves. Their full-length debut Durance of Lightless Horizons was a very good though somewhat bloated opening salvo, and their follow-up Liminal Shrines refines every element of their sound into one of the most notable death metal releases of the year.
There’s a pretty specific reason in my book why Gutvoid’s sound works for me. When discussing influences, riff masters Bolt Thrower immediately come to mind. From the opening frames of “Ruinous Gateways” and into “Spell Reliquary” the band’s adherence to mid-tempo chunk is apparent. But Gutvoid’s brilliance is in templature rather than outright mimicry. There’s distinct darkness here, with an almost warlike quality reminiscent of Teitanblood played at half-speed (maybe some Hooded Menace vibes sprinkled in as well) blended with the catchiness of Trey Azagthoth’s guitar work in Blessed Are the Sick creating some absolutely nasty soundscapes. There’s a doom-like heft to the songwriting, tempering their brand of sharpened filth with some death-doomy Disembowelment-style grotesqueries that fit their riffing like a glove. This is a boiling, churning pot of delicious grossness that takes its time in the pummeling, and I’m all the way here for it.
What sets Gutvoid apart from their influences, however, are the details. There are moments of deeply melodic and cosmic elegance here that cut through the fog of darkness with immediate impact and supreme effectiveness. “Of Smothering Sea” features multiple sections of soaring guitar work reminiscent of the spacier moments of Blood Incantation’s Starspawn dosed with the feral darkness of late-career Immolation, while “Chasm of Displaced Souls” dives headlong into the cosmic with such conviction that if viewed in a vacuum might come across as straight-up progressive death metal. But the secret sauce is how these sections fold into the band’s principal adherence to death-doom filth, creating something that feels adventurous and singular as opposed to simple copying. It’s a formula the band played with in their debut but is explored with much greater depth and songwriting precision here. It makes for a harrowing listen, and one I’ve repeated many times since the album’s release.
On the whole, it’s hard to consider Liminal Shrines anything short of a triumph for Gutvoid. Their growth as songwriters is evident, and their second full-length creates a sonic space that is dark, filthy, and varied. Blending caveman riffs with moments of transcendence is a hard balance to strike, but Gutvoid accomplish that mixture with flying colors. A deeply impressive record that gives me great excitement for the band’s continued development as a death-doom powerhouse.
-JA
Best of the Rest
Temple of Void - The Crawl
Let’s say that, for some reason, you want me to instantly fall in love with your album. In that strange and hyper-specific case, all you have to do is open it with a heavy metal solo. Just ask Temple of Void; “Poison Icon”, the track which opens The Crawl, erupts with a blisteringly satisfying, flamboyant solo. Nor is that where the heavy metal influences stop: the album is replete with melodic riffs, galloping drums, and an overall penchant drawn directly from the heyday of heavy metal’s dominance. The rest of it is pure death/doom filth, the darkness to the flame’s light, meaty, muscular riffs and guttural vocals generating a momentous pull that is hard to resist.
The end result is a release which doesn’t sound quite like anything I’ve heard in a while. Check out “A Dead Issue” as another example. What, exactly, are those scintillating, chromatic synths doing backing up the molasses-thick riff or on the same track with such deep, haggard vocals? I absolutely love that combo, as if an early Iced Earth album veered off a cliff on its way to a Candlemass concert and crash landed into a Suffocation release. Which is just to reiterate my point from above - The Crawl is for you if you remember, and love, that doom grew out of/alongside heavy metal and that, when mixed with death metal, it creates a rich and textured mix. On this release, Temple of Void show us how to create and wield that mix to a tee, creating an album that is both sweeping, punishing, and moving at the same time.
-Eden Kupermintz
Growth - Under the Under
It’s been a while since a technical death metal release grabbed but Growth’s Under the Under has. Maybe that’s because it is more of a progressive death metal release but who really cares about those distinctions all that much? The important thing is that Growth inject their intricate, complex style of death metal with a lot of feel and melodic ideas, moving past the initial instinct to go at full blast at all times. Couple that with a truly impressive ambition to create momentous, challenging music and you get an album that can be experienced on multiple levels or dimensions.
Beyond that ambition and the technical flair on display, I also love the kind of “full” production that the band have gone for here. By that I mean that very few elements of the sound are sacrificed but are instead all mixed loud and present (and well, which prevents the whole thing from sounding like a block of noise). Combine that with the type of composition at hand, which as I said above leaves plenty of space for melodic moments and even silence, and you get something which reminds me of none other than Mithras.
If you know how much I love that band, you know what a high compliment that is and Under the Under deserves every shred of it. If you’re looking for a death metal album that will take a while to sink into, and not just because it has fifty million notes a minute but because it also has many interesting ideas, twists, and turns, then this is the album for you. I can’t remember the last time I was as enamored with a progressive death metal album as technical as this and I’m loving every minute.
-EK