Putrified - "Sacrilegious Purification" (2013)

EP (Hellthrasher Productions, October 15^th 2013)

Line – up (2010):    A. Death – vocals/guitars/bass/drums/keyboards.

Location:                Stockholm (Sweden).

Better song of the work:

“Sacrificial Death Salvation”.

Better feature of the band:

Its bestial fury mixed with a good variety.

Cover artwork: A. Death

Ultimately, the Sweden is living a new great period of musical creativity about the old – school death metal. Now, the young metalheads listens to bands like Morbus Chron, Repuked (I reviewed in Italian their “Pervertopia” many months ago, check them out into the list of reviews here!) or Bombs of Hades, also because they have evolved the sound of masters like Entombed, Grotesque, Tiamat et similia. If you think, the revival of nowadays isn’t a real revival, but it is a simple movement of fresh flesh with a new sensibility, “new old – school” music and new dreams. In this way, the evolution is inevitable, don’t you think? Surely, now the superabundance of this kind of stuff involves both a less musical quality and a big difficulty to recognize the better bands of the genre but, in my opinion, the “new classics” can be released also into this “competition” atmosphere because, when there are many proposals, the possibilities to listen to a band with interesting features are very high. Or not?

So, here you are the Putrified, that are so conscious to belong to this “revival” movement to naming their own first demo as “The Return of the Swedish Old – School Death Metal”. Then, this solo – project band released even two albums between 2011 and 2012, A. Death is really prolific, so I’m going to review his new opus “Sacrilegious Purification”, consisting of 6 tracks per 22 minutes circa of slaughter.

The first important thing to say about the Putrified’s music is its fury, that is at times so bestial to closing to the early Tiamat of “Sumerian Cry” – era, all the more so because the dog – like vocals are very similar to those ones of Johan Edlund with the plus of occasional and strange voices, like desperate screams more “human” than the usual. The fury exhaled by A. Death consist of frequent blast – beats, also if the songs are very well – balanced between the fast tempos and the slower ones, not forgetting some headbanging moments here and there. Besides all this, the solos gives to the entire release a chaotic mood, the attack of the titletrack is a big example of this. Despite the ultra – violence, a single track can has even three solos, and these ones are well – played with a bunch of surprises during the listening of the EP.

In fact, the surprise – factor has a fundamental role in this work. First of all, the music of Putrified is influenced by many genres like black metal (the first two tracks especially), thrash (“Sacrificial Death Salvation” for example) and crust (“Evocatio”), while the closing track “Sacred Putrefaction” is based completely on doom metal. The black metal intuitions are helped by some minimalist and dark keyboards, but it’s a shame that they played only into the outros of many songs starting with “Sacrificial Death Salvation”. Secondly, A. Death try sometimes to be melodic, like in “This Poisoned Chalice” (but in this track the melodies aren’t developed in a good way) and the doomish “Sacred Putrefaction”. But this big variety isn’t always a good affair, also because the music risks to be less homogenous, maybe losing that incredibile violence, typical of many songs (so, “Sacred Putrefaction” is too different than the rest of the EP, considering even its very simple structure).

Despite all these considerations, the work contains a little death metal masterpiece titled “Sacrificial Death Salvation”, that has many anthology moments. By the way, the mid – section is awesome since it ranges from melodic and slow moments to ultra – furious assault through a crazy and simple restart. During these atmosphere shifts there is a long solo, able to adapt itself to the different and aforementioned passages. Neither I must forget the vocal performance here, in particular when A. Death screams the song’s title in the possible dirtier way!

Summarizing “Sacrilegious Purification”, it isn’t undoubtedly a new classic but contains a destructive old – school death metal with a very Swedish approach (production by the ex - Marduk Magnus “Devo” Andersson  included… and I love the wicked sound of the bass!) and an incredible variety combined with a bestial fury. But there are some important flaws here, like the tendency to not play the keyboards along with the other instruments (the first two songs excluded); the uselessness of some musical solutions for the song discourse (the melodic and groovy intro of “This Poisoned Chalice”); and a less homogenous sound (this point is linked to the aforementioned first one) all the more so because “Sacred Putrefaction” is the fish out of water of the EP. Fortunately, A. Death has an excellent talent to write very memorable songs, as “Sacrificial Death Salvation”, that can be the reference point for the future, maybe using the keyboards into the music in a more decisive way (like in “Pestilentialis”), and not only into the intros/outros.

Vote: 74

Flavio “Claustrofobia” Adducci

Tracklist:

1 – Sacrilegious Purification/ 2 – Pestilentialis/ 3 – Sacrificial Death Salvation/ 4 – This Poisoned Chalice/ 5 – Evocatio/ 6 – Sacred Putrefaction

BandCamp:

http://putrified.bandcamp.com/

FaceBook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Putrified/139314062811752