ABHORRATION – Demonolatry

vote
7.5

• Bands:
  ABHORRATION
• Duration: 00:36:49
• Available from: 09/27/2024
• Label:

• Invictus Productions

With their long-awaited debut album “Demonolatry”, Abhorration continue the path undertaken with the acclaimed EP “After Winter Comes War” (2021), confirming their talent and a well-defined stylistic direction.
This Norwegian band, active for only a few years, is actually made up of some veterans of the local extreme scene, with members coming from valuable thrash and death groups such as Condor, Nekromantheon and Obliteration. This sort of legacy is clearly reflected in the sound of the band, which from the beginning went straight on its own path, aligning itself with a recovery and reworking of a certain raw old school death metal, with evident influences from the early Morbid Angel.
From the first notes, “Demonolatry” confirms a strong devotion to the death metal tradition, but this does not mean that it completely renounces its own identity. While on the one hand the aforementioned clear influences of early Morbid Angel are omnipresent, starting from the angular rhythms of azagthothiana memory, Abhorration manage to maintain a discreet freshness in their approach. Their so-called trademark lies above all in the ability to construct complex episodes, which do not limit themselves to re-proposing certain classic patterns but instead rely on a more varied and enterprising structure. The songs are in fact characterized by continuous tempo changes and twisted sections which, while almost always maintaining an aggressive and martial attitude, leave room for moments of sudden complexity and unpredictability.
The tracks, with an average duration of six minutes, therefore require attention and repeated listening to be fully appreciated. The dense rhythmic developments and the high number of riffs per song suggest how the group has worked hard in a sort of structural research, arriving at results which, in terms of feeling, can even go so far as to recall the sensational Necrovation of “Breed Deadness Blood ”, although the latter clearly remains an unsurpassed work in terms of creative flair in the old-school revival field.
Furthermore, it should be noted that certain thrash influences – a legacy of the old Condor and Nekromantheon – manage to emerge in some sections, adding a small touch of dynamism which further enriches the overall sound of the quartet, making it more complete, despite remaining perpetually under a grim cloak of malignity.
In short, the quality of the songwriting is one of the strong points of “Demonolatry”: the tracklist is particularly uniform, but each piece manifests itself as a natural progression, well constructed and thought out, which avoids repetitiveness and knows how to surprise the listener.
Confirming the solidity of the project, the band has already demonstrated that it knows how to handle the stage and acquire an edge in the live context on the occasion of the last Kill-Town Death Fest in Copenhagen: an experience that has highlighted the impact of the live proposal and which brought further spotlight on the group.
Ultimately, we are faced with a more than convincing debut, traditional but at the same time quite refined. An album that promises to grow further with time and which gives a glimpse of a promising future for the Norwegians.