Venefixion - "Armorican Deathrites" (Iron Bonehead Productions, 2016)

Band: Venefixion
Title: Armorican Deathrites
Genre: Death/Thrash metal with Black metal elements
Year: 2016
Time: 12 min
Rating: 77/100











You can read my review about "Defixio" through the following link:

http://www.heavymetalwebzine.it/2016/03/12/venefixion-defixio-2015/

Be prepared for the next times to an overdose of French death metal because there will be a lot of blasphemous laughs with the new releases of Venefixion and Ritualization and also with the upcoming debut album of Skelethal. Today we starts with Venefixion, yet reviewed enthusiastically by me in occasion of their 2015’s demo “Defixio” when they were still a trio just to be considered  already like one of my favorite new bands of death metal. Now they are a quartet due to the addition of the guitarist J. Obscene with which Venefixion have recently released their very first EP via Iron Bonehead Prod: “Armorican Deathrites”. Needless to say, this new production by Venefixion is a devastating punch directly into the soul of the listeners leaving good hopes for the future of this band.


“Armorican Deathrites” starts with the short “Ar Vif (Le Grimoire des Morts)”, an intro all dominated by a funereal organ. Then, it's the turn of "An Ankou" and, starting from here, this EP is an unstoppable descent to the infernal darkness showing again a band with a very personal sound. 

Raw but technical at the same time, Venefixion destroys the world with a kind of Swedish death metal à la Grotesque but played through a maniacal thrashing metal approach as well as a diabolic black metal aura (yet listenable into the main riff of the same "An Ankou") so to make very dark the entire music also due to the insane growls full of cavernous reverber of F. Goathroat.

The songs of these Voodoo wizards are so dynamic and well-structured to have some groovy mid-tempos in thrash-style (like the ones of the omnipresent "An Ankou") while there are also doom parts sublimated especially during the conclusive "Naia (The Black One)", a track ending into a pure and slow vortex of horror making this number as the longer one of the EP with its 5 delirious minutes of lenght.

But all this isn't enough. In fact, the songs of Venefixion are so well-structured also because they uses very much the lead guitar, especially into the unpredictable titletrack with the result to create a more deep atmosphere.

All in all, I have fear to repeating the same exact things that I said for "Defixio"! This because Venefixion combines very well the most extreme intensity with a morbid atmosphere adding to all this both technical skills and inventiveness in a bestial mixture between Grotesque, Morbid Angel and Autopsy that is so terribly old-school to be miraculously personal! Maybe...and I said again "maybe" only the production of "Armorican Deathrites", surely most powerful also if a bit chaotic  than the one of "Defixio" (that sounded in a very murky way!), represents the sole weakness of this EP but, said frankly, it's useless to beat around the bush since even Fenriz supports greatly Venefixion!

Flashing news: the guitarist W. Cadavre has been recently subsistuted by Reiðō Zweit Eveno, a friend of the band yet member of the doomsters Ritual Temple.

Tracklist:

1 - Intro - Ar Vif (Le Grimoire des Morts)
2 - An Ankou
3 - Armorican Deathrites
4 - Naia (The Black One)

Line-up:

F. Goathroat - vocals
W. Cadavre - guitars
J. Obscene - guitars
K. Desecrator - bass/drums

BandCamp: http://venefixion.bandcamp.com/
FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/Venefixion-872776712799238/
Iron Bonehead Prod: http://www.ironbonehead.de/