Saturday, November 30, 2013

Verminous - "The Curse of the Antichrist" (2013)

EP (Blood Harvest Productions, June 21st 2013)

Line – up: Germaniac – vocals/guitar;
                  Pelle Piss – guitar;
                  Jonas Mattson – bass (lead guitar on “Revel in Flesh”);
                  Agge – drums.

Location:  Ahus (Sweden)

Sssh, don’t make noise, and honor the “new old” bands of the Swedish death metal. In fact, today it’s the Verminous turn, one of the first band to very anticipating this recent mass return to the dear old – school, being born even in 2002 from the ashes of Delve and with an album released one year after. Everything seemed to go in a very good way for the Verminous that, along with bands like Repugnant and Kaamos, were the only flags of the putrid and true death metal into a period where that bullsh… hem, the melodic death was very popular… but in 2004 the singer/guitarist Germaniac started to has some hearing problems. So, the band was in hold even for 6 long years, waiting the slow recovery of Germaniac. Finally, this year there has been the revenge of Verminous, not only releasing their own second album but also, few months ago, this EP titled “The Curse of the Antichrist”, full of 8 minutes circa for 3 tracks (2 of them are covers, that are “Hang the Pope” of Nuclear Assault and “Revel in Flesh” of the seminal Nihilist.

Okay, maybe this stuff is really modest, I would prefer 2 original tracks of 3. But the titletrack is a real spectacle of 4 minutes full of delirium, so it’s sufficient to introduce the future things to come. It shows a death metal so intense to be very hysterical, also thanks to sudden tempo shifts alternated between devastating blast – beats and tupa – tupas. At a certain point, there is a slowdown full of groove to moving incredibly your ass. The song works brilliantly without a solo, melodies or technical bullshits, increasing the intensity also through screaming growls that are truly wild (but not too much as in the Chilean Horrifying, of course!). But above all there is a frightful introduction with a climax consisting of 3 guitars, two of them engulfs the listener in a vortex of horror and fear. Then, there are beautiful death bells in the finale, making the concept in the clearest way.

All right, the rest is all composed by covers, as I wrote before. Of all them, I appreciated above all “Hang the Pope”, that has now a darker atmosphere in a death metal way, very good job! The other one, “Revel in Flesh”, is simply close to the original, and I notice that everyone is covering the Nihilist. This fact is not bad, but I don’t believe that really personalizing the covers can be a shame to the Masters, don’t you think?

In conclusion, what more can I say? This is: I’m sorry that my score to this EP is so short but sincerely an only original track is too little, also if it is very destructive. If you want to listen to something moooore consisting, so I advice you the last album “The Unholy Communion” (released by the Spanish Xtreem Music, the label of Dave Rotten of Avulsed), where the Verminous shows to be really angry after waiting so many years to do it. Hence, sssh, don’t makes noise… and go to listen to them.

Vote: 66

Flavio “Claustrofobia” Adducci

Tracklist:

1 – The Curse of the Antichrist/ 2 – Hang the Pope (Nuclear Assault cover)/ 3 – Revel in Flesh (Nihilist cover)

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