Tria Prima ~ Three Primes of Alchemy (2025)

 

BIO

The band was created in September 2024 in the city of Zhitomir(Ukraine) by members of various other famous Ukrainian projects(ex-Drudkh, ex-Lucifugum, ex-Blood of Kingu, Lutomysl, Bestial Invasion, Cosmic Jaguar and Violent Omen). The band's style is characterised as Death Metal with elements of Doom and Dungeon Synth. The main concept and theme of the band is alchemy and its different forms. In a short time the band recorded a 4 song mini album ‘Three Primes of Alchemy’ and shot a music video for the song Solar Sulfur with guest vocalist Anira. The band is currently working on a new full-length album, which they plan to release in the second half of 2025.

MY THOUGHTS

Ukrainian Alchemists Tria Prima blend death, thrash and doom metal stirred by the use of keyboards and symphonic harmonies into a punishing brew of raging riffs starting with the opening track 'Solar Sulfur' which begins in grandiose, operatic fashion before brutality is unleashed with a devastating death/thrash fury. The use of keyboards particularly during the more death/doom sections of the album adds a creepy dynamism studded with blistering solos and the excellent production ensures that the symphonic elements adds an extra tasty layer rather than dull the overall crunch of the guitar.

Based on the excellent quality of this 'Mini Album' I'm really looking forward to what the band has in store later this year with the release of their full length album.

JUST BEFORE DAWN ~ A War Too Far (2023)

A full frontal assault of Swedish death metal swathed from start to finish with incendiary riffs dripping phosphrous. With leanings toward Bolt Thrower, A War Too Far is an overwhelming assault on the senses, as merciless as it is brutal. The nine murderous tracks on offer combine into a death metallic war of attrition with no prisoners taken and corpses ground into the mud and dirt. A War Too Far  isn't uptempo, for all its ferocity, it doesn't revel in the glorification of bloodshed but instead sounds wearily accepting of the futility of it all, which makes this album sound grimmer and more realistic of the horrors of the subject matter.

Time to hoist the white flag of surrender before you're overwhelmed.

SPAWN OF EVIL ~ Sadistic Missionaries (2023)

The third album by Israeli death metal stalwarts Spawn Of Evil. Unyielding in its ferocity, Sadistic Missionaries overwhelms you with scything riffs and earthquake inducing rhythm sections. A seam of darkness running through the album completes the rout. Sadistic Missionaries isn't out and out brutality, the band doesn't try to crush you into oblivion. Instead Spawn Of Evil lacerates the skin off your bones then spits venom into the open wounds...the enduring pain lasts longer.

UNBLESSED DIVINE ~ Portal To Darkness (2023)

 Destructive, satanic death metal featuring former Malevolent Creation and Sinister members. Portal To Darkness is as dark and unforgiving as you're likely hear in a death metal album. Bludgeoning riffs merge with gothic sounding keyboards creating an atmosphere of spiritual unease and a sense of foreboding. Each track is a ferocious onslaught forcing you to your knees, head bowed, arms raised aloft in Satanic rapture.

TUMULATION ~ Haunted Funeral Creations (2023)

Tumulation is something of a supergroup consisting of members of bands wallowing in the lower regions of the 'Filth Pit' such as Conjureth, Messial, Sarcosium, Decrepitaph and more! regurgitatting repulsive Death/Doom harking back to the glory days of the early 90's. There are no frills with Haunted Funeral Creations, each track is fully immersed in a nightmarish vision of final judgement not just relying on the tried and trusted Death/Doom formula, instead, agonisingly stretching the pain into Funeral Doom and even tenuously, grind territory creating various layers of depravity. Modern recording methods enhance the overall claustrophobic atmosphere of the album, enhancing an aura of foreboding that bleeds through the clotted pores of each seething track.

For fans of: Autopsy, Winter, Blood Incantation, Hooded Menace, Paradise Lost, Incantation

IMPERISHABLE - Come, Sweet Death (2023)

Raging Swedish death metal pitted with some surprisingly exquisite lead work.  Coming from Sweden, there will be the usual comparisons and rightly so, but what makes Imperishable a cut above their contemporaries, is that the standard HM2 'buzzsaw' guitar, although evident, doesn't saturate the overall sound, making Come, Sweet Death  sound leaner and even more brutal than the likes of Dismember and Entombed who are obvious influences.

CENOBITE ~ Torment Your Flesh And Explore The Limits Of Experience (2023)

 HM-2  enshrouded  in the destructive, rampaging force of Hail Of Bullets and Bolt Thrower and consumed by the gloomy morbidity of Asphyx. Cenobite wallows in your pain and celebrates your abhorrence.

PRONOSTIC ~ Chaotic Upheaval (2023)

Highly complex, technical Canadian death metal and that description just scratches the surface because this quality album reaches for the throat in all directions. I normally try to make my reviews short, almost 'blurb' like, but there's so much going on in Chaotic Upheaval that its going to be an impossible task, but here goes anyway. 

There are many forms of death metal and the Cannibal Corpse strain this is not, but fear not because Pronostic takes brutality, chops it up, dices and slices it then puts it back together into a pummelling extreme metal jigsaw, the top notch production enabling the listener absorb the various components that make this album sound exceptional. There are so many facets of  Chaotic Upheaval that would normally turn the Neanderthal in me away. I don't normally listen to symphonic death metal, keyboards in death metal switch me off especially classical piano and don't mention saxophone in any metal album unless its Hawkwind's 'Space Ritual' but I found myself enthralled by how Pronostic managed to combine all of these elements, propelled by a Gojira like mood of savage aggression, without the album falling apart into complete chaos.

Give yourself plenty of time to fully appreciate the musicianship that has gone into this album, then go listen to it again and again in order to appreciate it even more each time.

VISION DEPRIVED ~ Self Elevating, Deep Inside The Void (2023)

 

Unsettling Italian death metal that spits and snarls in your face in an unrelenting, frenzied attack. The riffs just keep coming, charged with adrenaline, like a serial killer stalking his next kill. Self Elevating, Deep Inside The Void, hurtles from one toxic tempo to another with crust armoured grind vying with mid paced crunch in a withering dance of ferocious extremity.

NOTHINGNESS ~ Supraliminal (2023)

Chamelionic death metal from Minneapolis. This is the bands second album following on from the excellent The Hollow Gaze Of Death and is even more gloriously chaotic. Riffs assault the eardrums with frenzied abandon, sometimes black, sometimes doom, always devastating, connected by warped, deformed, progressive death metal influences.

This is one of those rare death metal albums that somehow manages to weave complex, nightmarish structures without losing an ounce of brutality

HORRID SIGHT ~ Evil Made Flesh (2022)

The last track 'Somber Dust' has just finished and I feel like I've been mauled by a pack of wolves then fed through an industrial cheese grater! This is an album of relentless fury and death/thrash savagery. Most of the tracks are between four and six minutes long which is perfect for allowing wailing, screeching solos to waltz with excoriating riffs in various merciless tempos.

I wish I had persevered with a 'best of' list for 2022 as 'Evil Made Flesh' by Mexican band Horrid Sight would most certainly have occupied a place within it.

ATOMWINTER ~ Sakrileg (2023)

I've just finished listening to Sakrileg the new album by Germany's Atomwinter so bear with me, I just need to scrub myself down with bleach and a wire brush before I resume putting down my thoughts on the album.........!

Right, that's better! 

A bit of background on the band's catalogue so far. Their first album 'Atomic Death Metal' was released in 2012 and does exactly what the album title says playing straight ahead death metal of a particularly brutal kind. 'Iron Flesh' crawled into existence three years later keeping the brutality cranked to maximum pain thresholds but this time with a layer of crusty doom/death. 'Catacombs' followed in 2018 and was much the same but this time Atomwinter wanted to not only crush us but asphyxiate the last ounce of breath from our broken bodies with a thicker, poisonous mix.

Which leads me onto the new album Sakrileg.

It's the same crusty doom/death grisliness but this time it's all about the death metal riff. Brutality and filth still prevails but Sakrileg is the fastest album the band has yet written despite being weighed down with pustules and scabs.

This album will make even the leprous headbang.

SLAUGHTER THE GIANT ~ Depravity (2022)

The album is called Depravity and contains various levels of it throughout, from pummelling technical influenced brutality to passages of operatic grandiose clouded by raging black metal sin. I haven't heard a band managing to marry both negative and positive emotion within the same album as successfully as Slaughter The Giant for a long time, maybe The Black Dahlia Murder influences helped. The tracks aren't overly long but because of their complexity they seem a lot longer, however, the really clever thing is how the band manages to keep the album flowing seamlessly despite the chaotic extremity.

For fans of: The Black Dahlia Murder, At The Gates, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Obscura

BLOODSOAKED MACHETE ~ Blood Soaked Machete (2022)

Carniverous death/thrash with Slayeresque solos shrieking in agony. The songs are mainly mid paced but accelerate with maniacal ferocity before frequently impaling the listener on colossal groove barbed hooks.

ARES KINGDOM ~ In Darkness at Last (2022)

US death metal relentless in its savagery. In Darkness At Last the latest album by Ares Kingdom matches the tradition of the bands earlier catalogue of releases of not allowing any room to breathe. Its a full on thrashing death experience. Place the cursor anywhere on any track and you'll be torn apart by a landmine of incendiary riffing.

File under V for Vicious.

CONVULSIS ~ An Evil Born From the Void (2022)

Wow! That was over in a heartbeat! Time flies when you're having fun. I've just finished listening to this sweet litlle headbang inducing EP from Michigan's Convulsis. Thrashing riffs slice and dice while the breakdowns run whats left through the grinder. Add a touch of death metal and what you have here is a potent, rabid slashfest.

File this under 'More Please!'

 

Hellgrav ~ Rottomatic (2022)

German death metal with a relentless HM-2 sound that grinds you to your knees. There's nothing new here and I'm sure Hellgrav couldn't care less, I certainly don't while I sit here listening to the album in all its downtuned, blood spattered glory!

SCORCHING TOMB ~ Rotting Away ( 2022)

 A hideous EP of scything, mid paced death metal with sandblasting riffs pitting the eardrums and creating grotesque phlebotomy.

There will be a cassette release through Dismal Fate Records sometime in September.

COILED AROUND THY SPINE ~ From The Ashes 2022 (Deluxe Edition)

Melodic they said. Well yeah, but most of the melody in this album has been expelled, slashed, battered and bruised, reeling from relentless death metal punishment and lacerating guitar solos.

This album was originally released in 2021 but has now been remixed and remastered, with extra songs, 'Like Hell' (Loudness cover) and 'Bite The Pain'  (Death cover)

VIZARESH ~ In The Depths (2019)

Coagulated riffs, clotted vocals. This is stomach churning Brazilian death metal.

First released in 2019 and now Name Your Price on Bandcamp.