SCOURGE – Insaciable

vote
7.0

• Bands:
  SCOURGE
• Duration: 00:24:43
• Available from: 10/31/2025
• Label:

• Nuclear Winter Records

Streaming not yet available

Sculpted in mud and darkness, Flagelo's debut EP connects to everything visceral and primitive that the world of extreme metal can offer. Released in self-produced form in April this year, the Greek Nuclear Winter Records is now responsible for its release in CD and vinyl format, while the cassette edition is entrusted to Night Terrors Records.
Calì's quintet plays with roughness, physicality and reasoned anger, descending the steps that lead to the abyss of the darkest death and black metal around, thickening them with very South American coarse-grained instinctiveness and a gravely doom-like gloom. A recipe that places the Colombian boys in the old-school death metal genre, at least as a starting point; this is because, alongside this summary evaluation, we have the adherence to other formulas, with flashes of ferocious war metal to bring out the songs from the most muddy parentheses and the general propensity to bastardize the riffing, to make it less obvious and more biting.
We are not faced with anything that feels new, nevertheless in morbid, sinister and restless songs, Flagelo know how to project ideas that are not necessarily prone to other realities in the sector. What stands out is an extremism that starts from death metal and incorporates more subtle and uncomfortable nuances.
Some unusual changes in tempo, in the direction of catacomb-like but dynamic slowdowns, dry and merciless restarts, atrocious screams of various kinds, overlap and sediment, offering small, fundamental variations within the individual compositions.

Instinctiveness, competence and technique have equal space during “Insaciable”, an accurate title in describing the group's work in a single word. Because the hunger, the 'insatiability' of the musicians involved here, means that they develop sharp, strong-impact songs, without giving up a pinch of aesthetics, the care for dynamics, the construction of meaningful tracks, which don't just sound like outbursts of beastly violence.
The comparisons proposed in the biography to frame the Colombian quintet are, in fact, pertinent: the severe rigor of an entity like Dead Congregation emerges in the densest and most solemn phases, while the explosive speeds, the germ of madness within convulsive structures between death, black metal and grindcore paroxysm, in fact recall groups such as Black Curse and Knelt Rote.

The juxtapositions between various extreme metal forms perceived in “Insaciable” are, as mentioned, nothing shocking, but in cases like these the confidence with which the band plays and the prowess of the individual tracks are what pleases.
There isn't a piece that stands out above the others, even if we have a hint of preference for when the music takes more breath and isn't limited to assaults of overflowing brutality, however well calibrated they are and at times truly frightening, due to the energy put into play. This is the case of “Historia Animal” and “Eslabón”, where a murky death/doom elegance contrasts with sordid and terrifying accelerations.
In short, a debut that is not miraculous but above average, which could lead to something even more ambitious and elaborate in the near future.