Hailing from the underground two executioners hailing from Portugal present us with their blasphemous offering Under the Deathsign. This is a blackened death metal release filled with crushing guitars, punishing drums and hellish vocals that satisfy all war metal needs. There’s no denying the uncompromising take that his band has and the dark enjoyments that can be extracted from this.
The eerie and haunting intro reminds me of fellow Iberian war metal act, Teitanblood, as well as the crushing atmosphere and foggy, underground production that adds to the dire atmosphere the album builds. You also can’t help but be captured by the echoing vocals and crushing guitars, both having this reverberating cave like production that again, keeps on adding to the atmosphere. There’s a hypnotic slamming chug scattered throughout the album, really driving home this almost psychedelic take on the genre, and foregoing the dense and overly fast songwriting for more mid-pasted and well executed passages. My favorite track from the album is Encarnaçao Divina the seventh track off the album. It starts with a hauntingly crushing death/doom passage with gritty guitars and crushing drums that rile you up with the anticipation of the chaotic transition into the latter half of the track, consisting of hellish blast beats and a hypnotically chugging guitar riff that drills itself into the listeners psyche.
Its hard to hate a release like this, it nails all of the war metal tropes as well as creating their own sense of sound through it all and not simply sounding like a Teitanblood clone given how close certain similarities are with the aforementioned band. It goes to show little changes in terms of the production and slowing down the songwriting can create for a real memorable war metal release with plenty of character to separate its self from the horde. I found my self absolutely hooked on this release wish I had discovered it sooner given this was originally released back in 2020. Any self proclaimed war metal demoniac should give this album a listen as its a very solid release deserving of the same praise and name dropping as Teitanblood, Proclamation, Pseudogod, and many others.