vote
8.0
- Band:
Unmerciful - Duration: 00:38:20
- Available since: 23/05/2025
- Label:
-
WillowTip Records
Streaming not yet available
A scheduled storm to kill. The return of the Unmerciupul, five years after the previous “Wrath Encompassed”, is one of those records capable of imposing itself for their fierce and overwhelming approach to the Death Metal matter, thickening in such a way as not to give respite or breath to the listener on duty, and that at a later time, in the shirts of a peremptory and very severe sound, they reveal such a methodical songwriting. And surgical that cannot be left indifferent who, of this music, first of all appreciates the art of the riff in an intransigent and inhuman context.
A work that is looking for in annihilation – finding it – its raison d'etre, and that fades every action in the blood to rise to the programmatic manifesto of a certain type of stars and stripes death metal, resulting soon the most successful effort of the formation of Topeka since the time of the notorious debut “Unmerciupully Beaten” (2006).
Perhaps the return to the base of Jeremy Turner (at the time, together with the other guitarist Clint Appelhanz, a member of the first incarnation of the Origin, as well as shift of the Cannibal Corpsse for the promotional cycle of “The Wretched Spawn”), the disc regained a dynamic propulsion that the previous post-reunion efforts-far from being weak or off-were not succeeded in the basis. To hit, shining from start to finish for a rare balance between expressive lucidity and total barbarism.
Songs that exploded, liberators, as a shot in the face, and in which the Death Metal in its most Belluin form is brightened by musicians who know perfectly where to go to enhance its characteristics and potential, combining fury and technique in a songwriting where nothing is left to chance.
Listening to the album, the image of a group is therefore wide in the mind that, never lost the compass, still recovers a fugitive momentum for a long time in its charge with a low head, and which combining the experience of veterans (Turner and Appelhanz, in fact) with the contribution of the latest arrivals (the frontman Josh Riley and the drummer Trynt Kelley) returns to the levels of inspected levels Ingenuity, effectiveness and destructiveness.
As always, the comparison with the authors of “Antithesis” (also paid homage to a cover of “Vomit You Out”) arises spontaneously, but if elsewhere such a stylistic proximity could question the relevance and personality of the whole, in “Devouring Darkness” – given the aforementioned passes of guitarists – the question becomes rather a bond consistent with the past, Written proudly in fury and speed, with episodes such as “Unnatural Ferocity”, “Malice Unbound”, the title-track and “Vengeance Transcending” to reiterate the overwhelmingness of an irreducibly based writing on riffs with a capital r and rhythmic killer.
A vision carried forward by a band with a penalty and skill, but which is aware of how, without instinct, it is not possible to stage a carnage worthy of the name, skiing in the forty minutes of the collection a long series of concrete and galvanizing evolutions, which are gradually mounting like a tsunami of fire and melted lead.
For lovers of a certain type of tense and brutal Death Metal – those who, no later than a year ago, had enhanced themselves before the monstrous “Harbinger of Woe” of the Brodequin – a mandatory passage of this 2025 increasingly full of outings.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
