Hailing from the legendary metal land of Brazil, comes DeathSlaüghter and their newest release, Passing Through the Valley of the Sodomites, a heavy, fast paced, blackend death metal band that harkens back to Brazilian metal bands of old. Heavy, meaty riffs, chunky drums, and demonic vocals are whats to expect here, a textbook approach with some modern production.
This is a type of album where what you see is what you get. A harsh black/death album with a very straight forward approach. That’s not saying its not of quality. There’s plenty of heavy riffage to cover and some incredibly catchy songwriting that’ll have you turning into a headbanging maniac. There’s something almost punkish with the approach. Primal and raw with plenty of attitude. Which, given the song titles as, Bestiality, Receptacle, and, My Descendants Will Kill Yours, you’re in for a barbaric display of sound.
The production on this album is quality. Raw and chunky guitars, stiff yet aggressive drums, and a heavily audible bass with great force. There are even some keyboards thrown in every now and then to help push along the atmosphere. Better yet are the vocals. Sounding like a true champion of hell with their deep guttural approach. Very old-school in that early Sarcofago kind of way. The album its self is rather long, totaling out at a little over 49 minutes, there’s enough variety in the songwriting to really keep you interested through out the whole thing. Thankfully the riffs don’t get tiring and the drums, while sounding a little digitized, are still a nice touch to it all. A great example of this is the fifth track, For the Glory of Roma and Sparta. An epic ballad and ode to the ancients that are told through the guitars mighty sounding riffs. Its a long track as well, totaling a little bit over 8 and a half minutes, it really does feel like it could go longer with out it burning out.
This is the band’s second full length album, and a strong one at that. Their previous album, The Last Great War of Humanity, is a strong album, but this one clearly took what worked with the last and pushed it better with better production and a unique stylistic approach. While hellish and demonic, leaning more heavily into the strange and dark occult imagery. Personally, I found this rather appealing and found my self enjoying this album from start to finish. Not really blown away by something new and experimental, but certainly enjoying that old and trve sound. A band to keep an eye on certainly for those die-hard death metal fans, who like to tack on ‘thrash, black’ and other such genre titles to it all.