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  • Deeds of Flesh – Nucleus (2020) REVIEW

    Deeds of Flesh – Nucleus (2020) REVIEW

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    Few bands in the brutal death metal sphere can claim the same legacy of consistency, extremity, and forward-looking vision as Deeds of Flesh. From their formative eruption with Trading Pieces (1996) through the labyrinthine savagery of Path of the Weakening (1999) and the technical maelstrom of Crown of Souls (2005), the Californian veterans established themselves as architects of a uniquely relentless strain of brutality.

    By the time Of What’s to Come (2008) and Portals to Canaan (2013) arrived, their sound had broadened into something resembling a cosmic death metal opera—still anchored in sheer violence, but increasingly concerned with atmosphere, narrative, and scale. Nucleus, their ninth studio album and the first since the passing of founding guitarist/vocalist Erik Lindmark in 2018, is at once a tribute, a culmination, and a bridge to the future.

    If Portals to Canaan hinted at vast interstellar ambitions, Nucleus delivers them in full. From the opening salvo of “Alyen Scourge,” the band announces their intent: blistering technicality wrapped around galactic thematics, propelled by angular riffs and surgical percussion. Where earlier albums thrived on claustrophobic brutality, Nucleus embraces expansiveness, layering sci-fi soundscapes with a galaxy-spanning narrative. It is both brutal death metal and something larger—progressive, cinematic, even symphonic in vision.

    A notable feature is the sheer number of guest vocalists, an all-star roll call of extreme metal. George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher (Cannibal Corpse) lends his unmistakable roar to “Ethereal Ancestors,” while Luc Lemay (Gorguts) colors “Catacombs of the Monolith” with his spectral growls. John Gallagher (Dying Fetus), Frank Mullen (Suffocation), and Matti Way (ex-Disgorge) each step into the fold, transforming the album into a collaborative testament to Lindmark’s influence across the genre. It could have easily felt overstuffed or gimmicky; instead, the revolving voices provide both variety and weight, a chorus of peers honoring one of their own.

    Musically, the record treads a careful balance between Deeds of Flesh’s traditional intensity and a more ambitious compositional palette. Tracks like “Races Conjoined” and “Spirit of the Monolith” showcase the band’s continued mastery of frenetic riffcraft—lightning-fast tremolo lines and jagged chugs colliding in dizzying succession—while also weaving in melodic threads that recall the cosmic atmospherics of Obscura or Fallujah. Meanwhile, “Alyen Scourge” plays like a death metal requiem, its mournful melodies stretching across its violent backbone, gesturing toward the album’s underlying theme of death, rebirth, and infinite cycles.

    It’s worth noting that Nucleus is not an easy listen, even for seasoned death metal ears. Its density demands immersion, its shifts in tempo and tone often border on overwhelming, and the production—pristine yet punishing—leaves little room for breath. This is deliberate: Deeds of Flesh have always trafficked in extremity, and here they sharpen that blade with futuristic precision. Still, in its most transcendent moments, the record achieves something that feels less like a collection of songs than a unified sonic narrative, a sprawling science-fiction saga told through blast beats and gutturals.

    If there is a criticism to be made, it is that the sheer density occasionally sacrifices memorability. For all its cosmic vision, few riffs linger as instantly as the hooks of Path of the Weakening or the pummeling grooves of Reduced to Ashes. The ambition sometimes overtakes the immediacy, making Nucleus an album more to be experienced in full than cherry-picked for standout tracks. Yet this feels like part of the point: Nucleus is a monument, not a sampler.

    Ultimately, Nucleus stands as both a eulogy and a rebirth. It honors Erik Lindmark’s legacy not by looking backward but by propelling Deeds of Flesh further into uncharted territory. In its melding of technical violence, cosmic scope, and communal tribute, it captures the spirit of a band unwilling to fade quietly. It is demanding, overwhelming, and deeply moving—an album that proves death metal can be both brutally uncompromising and profoundly human.

    RATING: 8/10

  • Spite – Dedication to Flesh (2022) REVIEW

    Spite – Dedication to Flesh (2022) REVIEW

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    There’s no mistaking what Spite are about. From the first lacerating seconds of Dedication to Flesh, the Californian deathcore bruisers plant their flag: extremity isn’t just the point, it’s the entire mission statement. This is an album that lives and dies on impact, on the visceral satisfaction of riffs sharpened like rusted blades and vocals that feel less screamed than exorcised.

    If their previous work hinted at their potential to become one of the scene’s most merciless voices, Dedication to Flesh confirms it. This isn’t a reinvention of the wheel, but it is a reminder of how violently the wheel can crush you when it’s spinning at full force. Songs like “Lord of the Upside Down” and “Hangman” are sheer sonic punishment: low-end chugs detonating like controlled demolitions, drumwork pushing beyond precision into outright battery, and vocalist Darius Tehrani spitting venom with theatrical relish.

    What separates Spite from their peers is the sense of purpose that runs through the chaos. This isn’t breakdown-for-breakdown’s-sake deathcore. The songwriting, while primal, is tight and deliberate, guiding the listener through bursts of violence that still leave space for hooks and memorable turns. The title track in particular marries brute force with a twisted kind of catchiness, the sort that burrows into the skull long after the song has ended.

    Production-wise, the record gleams with modern heft—every slam and every scream rendered in hi-def brutality. Yet Spite wisely avoid the trap of over-polishing; there’s grit left in the mix, a reminder that this is supposed to feel dangerous. And lyrically, while we’re not talking philosophy seminars, there’s an undercurrent of defiance and existential disgust that adds depth to the band’s otherwise blunt-force approach.

    In that sense, Spite succeed spectacularly. Dedication to Flesh is a sharpened weapon of an album, one that proves deathcore can still feel urgent, dangerous, and downright thrilling when executed with this much conviction.

    RATING: 9/10

  • Within Destruction – Void (2016) REVIEW

    Within Destruction – Void (2016) REVIEW

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    With Void, Within Destruction have taken a blowtorch to deathcore’s familiar architecture and rebuilt it with chrome, neon, and trap beats. This isn’t the sound of breakdowns and blast beats dominating every corner – it’s the sound of a band asking how much genre DNA can be stripped away before the whole organism mutates into something else entirely. The result is polarizing, intoxicating, and often ridiculous, but it’s never safe. 

    What’s striking about Void is its refusal to appease the faithful. Where 2018’s Deathwish felt like a slab of Eastern European brutality imported straight into the deathcore canon, Void exists in a different world: guttural roars sliding into rap cadences, mechanical riffs dissolving into booming 808s, and choruses layered with shamelessly processed vocals. Tracks like “Nightmare” and “Human Defect” blur the line between SoundCloud rap nihilism and cybernetic deathcore, as if Ghostemane had wandered into a Fit for an Autopsy session armed with nothing but an MPC. It’s a gamble that works best when the band leans into excess. The production gleams with digital sharpness, sub-bass hitting harder than most guitars on contemporary records. 

    There are moments of undeniable swagger, a sense that Within Destruction aren’t just experimenting but actively mocking the idea of purity in extreme music. This is deathcore gutted, hollowed out, and reprogrammed for the TikTok generation. Of course, not all of it lands. Some hooks stumble into parody, and the record’s commitment to maximalism occasionally exposes its lack of depth. For longtime fans, this may feel less like an evolution than a betrayal. Yet even in its weakest stretches, Void carries an aura of daring that’s hard to dismiss. 

    It’s the rare deathcore record that refuses to stay in its lane, preferring instead to crash headfirst into oncoming traffic. What Void makes clear is that Within Destruction are no longer interested in playing gatekeeper-approved deathcore. They’re chasing a different kind of heaviness – one rooted in internet culture, in post-genre sprawl, in the kind of nihilism where irony and sincerity become indistinguishable. Whether you see this as innovation or degeneration will depend on your appetite for risk.

    RATING: 7.5 / 10

  • Lorna Shore – Psalms (2015) REVIEW

    Lorna Shore – Psalms (2015) REVIEW

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    Lorna Shore’s early EPs had aleady drawn attention in deathcore circles, but this debut full-length aimed to prove they could stand shoulder to shoulder with the genre’s established acts while injecting a touch of their own ambition. Equal parts blistering and atmospheric, Psalms reveals a group testing the boundaries of deathcore while still very much finding their footing, and offers a snapshot of that ambition—an album straddling the line between orthodox deathcore pummeling and hints of something grander, even symphonic.

    Musically, Psalms is very much a deathcore record of its time: panic chords, staccato riffs, blast beats, and cavernous breakdowns arrive in steady rotation. But Lorna Shore elevate their attack with touches of blackened extremity and classical-inspired atmospherics, elements that would eventually blossom into the symphonic grandeur defining their later works. Tracks like “Grimoire” and “Throne of Worms” pepper the violence with eerie keyboard flourishes and sinister melodies, small but noticeable gestures toward a more cinematic scope. At the time, it felt like a subtle widening of deathcore’s boundaries, even if the execution wasn’t fully realized.

    Vocally, Tom Barber’s performance is relentless. His gutturals are low enough to rattle drywall, while his shrieks pierce through with venomous clarity. Yet his delivery also underscores one of the album’s central issues: uniformity. While undeniably powerful, Barber’s approach often blurs into a single, undifferentiated tone across the 38-minute runtime, leaving some songs bleeding into one another. The same can be said for much of the instrumentation—tight, brutal, and proficient, but often lacking the dynamic shifts or standout hooks to separate one track from the next.

    Still, there are moments where Lorna Shore shine through the murk. “From the Pale Mist” builds its atmosphere with genuine menace, its symphonic textures complementing the churning guitars rather than fighting for space. “Godmaker” balances technical riffing with breakdown heft, hinting at a more mature songwriting instinct. These highlights suggest the band were beginning to carve out their own lane, even if Psalms sometimes struggles to fully commit to that path.

    Looking back with the hindsight of Lorna Shore’s later triumphs—especially the symphonic deathcore explosion of Immortal and Pain Remains—Psalms feels like a formative but transitional document. It’s the sound of a band caught between wanting to deliver crushing heaviness and reaching for something more ambitious, with the two impulses not always perfectly married. For fans tracing the arc of deathcore’s growth, however, the album remains an intriguing checkpoint: raw, flawed, but undeniably promising.

    Ultimately, Psalms may not be the record that rewrote deathcore’s rulebook, but it showed that Lorna Shore were paying attention to the genre’s limits and itching to break them. A decent, if uneven, debut that hinted at the band’s eventual transformation from underground bruisers to modern extreme metal titans.

    RATING: 7 / 10 

  • Whitechapel – Our Endless War (2014) REVIEW

    Whitechapel – Our Endless War (2014) REVIEW

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    By 2014, Whitechapel were already an institution in modern deathcore, their name synonymous with granite-thick breakdowns, endless brutality and Phil Bozeman’s infamous growl. With Our Endless War, the Knoxville outfit set out to prove they weren’t content to be trapped within genre boundaries — though the results reveal both the strength and the tension of that ambition, something that brought confusion and tension even to their most loyal fans.

    From the outset, the title track makes its mission statement clear: punishing grooves still dominate, but there’s a sharpened sense of accessibility in the riffs, with thrash-tinged speed and an almost arena-ready chorus hook. This duality runs throughout the record. Songs like “Mono” and “Let Me Burn” lean hard into the visceral edge that made Whitechapel a household name, their layered guitars and triggered drums striking with surgical precision. Yet elsewhere, particularly on “Worship the Digital Age” and “Psychopathy,” the band flirts with mainstream metal tropes that pull them closer to the orbit of Lamb of God or even Slipknot than pure deathcore, of which they have been among the original perpetrators.

    Phil Bozeman’s performance anchors the record. His guttural roars remain among the most commanding in the scene, but what’s striking here is his exploration of cleaner, more enunciated deliveries. While not a full embrace of melody, these moments hint at the evolution that would come to fruition on later releases like The Valley. For some fans, it was a welcome risk; for others, it felt like Whitechapel softening their edges. Production, handled by Mark Lewis, is where the knife truly cuts both ways. The guitars hit with enormous clarity and weight, but the polish can occasionally blunt the feral energy that gave earlier records their bite. It’s a sound perfectly tailored for the big stage, less so for the dingy club chaos where deathcore first thrived.

    Ultimately, Our Endless War stands as a transitional album. It doesn’t fully abandon the band’s roots, but it doesn’t cling to them either. The experimentation sometimes lands awkwardly, but it also reveals a group restless enough to push beyond the limitations of their peers. For better or worse, this was the album that began to redefine Whitechapel not just as leaders of deathcore, but as a metal band aiming for longevity. Notably, “The Saw Is the Law” has since become the band’s most-streamed track, underscoring how this era’s experiments resonated beyond their core fanbase.

    Rating: 7.5 / 10

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