Hailing from the Kentucky underground crawls forth Sinistrum, a foreboding and hellish death metal act presenting us a textbook death metal release. These guys hit the check list at all levels. Evil, heavy, and chugging dissonant riffs, guttural and ghoulish vocals, brain blasting drums, and satanically gory lyrics that encapsulates the death metal essence.
After a slow and spacious guitar intro with some gnarly arpeggioed riffs thrown into the mix, they jump straight into it turning up the speed and aggression while holding onto their melodic integrity. For modern death metal, this is kind of a release to expect. Squeaky clean production, yet heavily down tuned guitar to create that familiar rumbling noise that mixes well with the double bass on the drums.
Thankfully there’s some diversity in the song writing, not just keeping one pace, they mix it up with plenty of slower passages that blend well with the faster more aggressive approach as well. They also have this groove that they carry all through out the album, feeling loose and flowy and very melodic as I’ve mentioned before. To me it’s really the main redeeming factor that band has, which is that infectious groove. Other than that it’s a rather middle of the road death metal album. Not offensive to the old heads who hold onto that epically brütal sound from the olden days, but I also feel this wouldn’t blow the minds of the younger kids getting into the genre. But I would say, a band like this would be a very strong introduction to the modern day of this genre and the rather simplistic, and admittedly safe approach they take here.
All in all, this is a fun album and a good debut. Heavy, hellish, and dripping with a sort of gore that one can only replicate in the minds eye with monstrous vocals that they recreate here. Give this a listen if you’re an extreme metal veteran wanting some easy listening in-between your brütally grindy riff sessions, or if you’re a newcomer and don’t know where to start, and want to experience what the new stuff is, this is a good start.