ALBUM REVIEW: Hades – Thanatomass
Russia’s THANATONMASS may have only been active for a few years, but this dark and sinister sounding trio may well be one of the most interesting acts to come out of the country in recent years. Since their first demo MMXV-MMXVI saw the light of day in 2018, the band have been crafting an extremely raw and rabid brand of black metal that takes many of its core influences from the genre’s early days, when lines between black, thrash and death metal were much less clearly defined, with the sound of each of their releases having a classic, timeless feel without being stale and formulaic. The band’s long-awaited debut album Hades continues to embrace this style and ambience, resulting in a sombre and frenzied introduction to the wider musical world.
Katabasis (Intromass) sets a bleak and haunting tone before quickly shifting into the first full song on the record, Templvm Carnalis / Vomit Ceremony; this fairly chaotic and aggressive piece of music, built around frenetic guitar work and intricate, energised drumming, takes a lot of its musical cues from blackened thrash, with buzzsaw rhythms, brutal bursts of belligerent intensity and harsh, grating vocals making for a fast and caustic opening effort. The extremely stark and dirty production further adds to this song’s charm, lending it a raw and claustrophobic quality that’s hard not to get drawn in by.
The brief yet equally blistering Gravedance Sabbath provides a short, sharp shock of jarring guitars, punishing percussion and coarse, roaring vocals, making for a more streamlined but nonetheless bellicose iteration of the sound displayed on the preceding track. Living Tombs Of Tartaros reduces the pace to a relative crawl, with a thunderous drum sound and denser guitars punctuated by passages of unbridled ferocity as the feral bark of the vocals injects an even more visceral edge into the mix. Demented leads add an air of peak 80s SLAYER into the fray, making for another dizzying whirlwind of primordial, primal extreme metal with one foot firmly planted in an old school sound and approach.
Sorcery Of Hades continues in the same cacophonous vein as the majority of what has come before it, but manages to embrace a more disjointed and unhinged style of guitar playing that makes this even more oppressive and dissonant if anything. Again, there are a few noticeably mid-paced sections peppered throughout, with measured drums and slicker leads, but on the whole this follows the jarring and rabid formula that has served this record well so far.
The Bone Nimbus feels more like an extended crescendo for the previous track rather than a song in its own right, but it serves as a suitably savage segue into the final offering on the record, Retromass (Morbid Ordinance of Doom); another powerful piece of blackened thrash with a few slower, doom-laden moments littered throughout it, it’s another lengthy affair that draws out the punchy and nauseating aspects of this style, providing little in the way of variation from the style that has dominated this whole album other than the aforementioned tempo shifts.
Like many albums in the same vein, Hades is definitely not trying to reinvent the wheel or push blackened thrash into new territories, but this isn’t something to be critical about. THANATOMASS have certainly found their lane and stuck within it musically, and this album possesses the sort of raw, gritty production and preponderance for extreme metal’s embryonic days as an influence that often works extremely well. The songwriting and musicianship are tight and near flawless, with the album feeling incredibly cohesive, to the point that each of these tracks could just be one section of a larger, more monolithic composition, whilst still adding their own distinct flavour to the record. As far as debut albums go, it’s magnificent, and it sets an incredibly high bar for THANATOMASS and any future music they produce.
Rating: 8/10
Hades is out now via Living Temple Records.
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