ALBUM REVIEW: Defiled In Oblivion – Castrator
It’s been a long time coming, but CASTRATOR’s debut record Defiled In Oblivion is finally here, almost seven years after the New York death metallers made their intentions clear with their No Victim EP. Theirs is a brand of no holds barred, no frills, classic American death metal that rips through the sonic fabric of existence, creating here 10 horrific and violent tracks that clearly show that this band knows what they’re about.
Dawa Of Yousafzai goes off like a 12-gauge shotgun to get this record underway and barely lets up the intensity across five punishing minutes; even when it seems to have ended, they reload and tear your face off again with another outburst and one final chugging riff that is utterly irresistible – good luck not breaking your neck to this one. Tormented By Atrocities follows in similarly restless fashion, barely giving the listener space to breathe in a claustrophobic and crushing landslide of venom. While they may already be repeating the trick of slowing it down and adding a bit of chunk to the brutality, the track ultimately ends with the guitars and drums collapsing into a frenzy of scattered parts amidst a wash of feedback and distortion for one final chaotic punch to the face.
Voices Of Evirato opens with ethereal choral chanting that slowly becomes increasingly distorted and echoed, growing incredibly trippy and disorienting before bodyslamming you into the album’s most potent riff and sheer blast beat mayhem. The track largely employs a wall of sound approach that is punctuated with fleeting and proficient solos – in fact, guitarist Kimberly Orellana puts in a proper shift on this record but nowhere moreso than on this track. An incredible singular performance that is held up by all members of the band. This is CASTRATOR at their hellish best.
The record closes with a cover of VENOM’s 1982 staple Countess Bathory; the tempo and the intensity have been dialled up resulting in a cover that does the original justice but changes just enough for this version to feel uniquely theirs. While some of the relative melody may be missing from the original, vocalist Clarissa Badini sounds particularly monstrous on this one.
Unfortunately, Defiled In Oblivion has its fair share of issues as well. Inquisition Sins features a weird production hiccup where guitars fade out in the middle of a riff; Purge The Rotten (Ones) includes a solo in the middle that seems to be plonked in randomly and takes the whole song off beat for a few messy moments; and Tyrant’s Verdict feels almost patchwork toward the end and loses a lot of cohesion. Death metal has never been the most polished of genres, but some of these are so avoidable and this reviewer’s distinct hope is that it is solely an issue with the advance preview copy we had access to. Sadly though, it likely isn’t.
At its best, this full-length debut sees CASTRATOR throw down and hang with some of the bigger names in USDM. But while the blueprint is there, it’s ultimately mired in amateur production issues that detract from the ferocity at key moments. A middling and messy release that ultimately betrays a bloody good band.
Rating: 6/10
Defiled In Oblivion is set for release on July 22nd via Dark Descent Records.
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