In an age where brutality has been defined by senseless blast beats, gurgled vocals, unstructured grind riffs, and the production value of a septic tank, it’s nice to see some bands take things back to the basics. By “the basics”, I mean albums like Slayer’s Reign in Blood and Kreator’s Pleasure to Kill. No matter how hard you try to persuade me otherwise, there is no “IQ lowering, caveman slam band” on the planet that is more brutal than these extreme metal cornerstones. Mind you, Reign in Blood isn’t even in my top 3 Slayer albums, yet I recognize its historical significance and hold it in that high regard.
Detherous adheres strongly to this philosophy, as heard on their latest full length, Unrelenting Malevolence. One must admit that it’s a rather ballsy title; a title that harkens back to the days of death metal’s roots, when it existed almost exclusively via the tape trading underground. After all, it did take a couple years after the release of Death’s Scream Bloody Gore for even the most ardent metal labels to accept it as a legitimate style and scene, subsequently signing bands of this ilk left and right. It isn’t just the title Unrelenting Malevolence that’s a throwback to the salad days of death. It’s the music within too.
Whereas today’s most devout dealers of death tend to preface their albums with the obligatory acoustic/synth/atmospheric soundscape as a musical calm before the storm, Detherous wastes no time at all going for the jugular with the one-two punch of “Interminable Mutilation” and “Suspended in Agony”. From its hellish vocals and muscular riffing, to its obliterating drumming and unabashedly old school production, one can’t help but draw comparisons to Demolition Hammer. While these similarities are more than present throughout this release, especially during the knuckle-dragging mosh passages of songs like “Reek of the Decayed” and “Tormented By the Dead”, Detherous are much more than a Demo Hammer clone.
Unrelenting Malevolence boasts nods to Slayer and Kreator’s aforementioned ’86 masterpieces, as well as Possessed, Death, Morbid Angel, and so forth. At no point does Detherous blatantly sound like any one of these bands, but they sure capture the pure spirit of their earliest days, when all that mattered was metal played at full speed with the utmost brutality and maximum violence. The riffs on “Gruseome Tools of Torture”, “Encased in Gore”, and the closing “Cataclysmic Devastation” are some of the toughest I’ve heard in a minute, the equivalent of a death metal massacre. And for those who were lucky enough to get the CD of this here album, there’s a faithful homage to (surprise) Demolition Hammer with a ravaging rendition of “Skull Fracturing Nightmare”.
With a little over a month and a half left to go in 2022, I highly doubt another album will drop in the coming weeks as brutal as Unrelenting Malevolence. As the days grow shorter and nights grow longer, and the temperatures dip from cold to freezing to subzero, Detherous have brought Christmas early with an album guaranteed to power you through this dark, unforgiving season. At least I know it’ll do so for me. And if you have the good fortune of NOT living in a tundra, well, have fun moshing to this in your pool Bozo!
7 out of 10
Label: Redefining Darkness Records
Genre: Death/Thrash Metal
For fans of: Demolition Hammer, Kreator, Slayer