ALBUM REVIEW: Totenzug: Festering Peregrination – Nekrovault

NEKROVAULT are one of the most promising prospects within the European death metal scene. The German quartet have not rested on their laurels since the release of their debut E.P, Obscure in 2018, with its follow up, Cursed by Ascended Darkness perfecting the band’s sound even further. Their debut album, Totenzug: Festering Peregrination, showcases a band at their creative zenith, and is arguably one of the more bestial and harsh death metal records to come out so far this year.

Totenzug – Funereal Hillscapes is a dark and atmospheric track that starts the album off in style; after a foreboding opening motif, the song quickly descends into a vicious, grating slab of death metal, built around primitive drumming, jarring guitars and snarling, acidic vocals. It’s a monstrous and impressive start that sets a bleak and oppressive tone for the rest of the record. Sepulkrator takes all the best aspects of the previous track and amplifies them, making for a huge, groove-laden offering with sharp, howling vocals and dense, crushing guitars. There’s also plenty of great, sludgy bass hooks that make for an incredible, weighty sound all the way through. This is an amazing, sprawling track with some brilliant riffs that definitely take their cues from a more old school sound.

Psychomanteum – Luminous Flames is another fine example of how NEKROVAULT are able to blend thick, robust rhythms and disjointed, eerie leads to craft a fierce and mesmerising song. This is a song that is really carried by the discordant lead guitars, which have a lot of imaginative flourishes added to make this particular song completely engrossing. The drums inject a lot of intensity to the proceedings, and the vocals are noticeably more subdued, which really allows the guitars to come to the fore and establish this track as an early stand out on the record. Pallid Eyes is, compared to the first three songs, a fairly punchy and straight forward track, being significantly faster and more energetic, leading to a more aggressive sound. The hallmarks of the bands sound are still there, but it’s a change of pace that certainly makes the listener sit up and take notice.

Serpentrance acts as a brief, haunting instrumental piece that does a great job of breaking up the album, and adding a little ambience to the album’s sound. It leads seamlessly into Basilisk Fumes, another shorter and catchier affair that has a more by-the-numbers death metal sound. With fantastic, lurching guitar motifs and beefy, bellicose vocals, it makes full use of its length, peppering the music liberally with tight, crunching guitar hooks that it’s hard not to love, and proving to be one of the more visceral and powerful tracks on the whole album. Eremitorium sees the acerbic and jarring side of the bands sound reach its apex, with some great, yet utterly caustic, leads giving this song a sharp, grating feel that is complemented by the feral delivery of the vocals. A few cleaner guitar tones begin to creep into the mix, but this is ultimately an exercise in discordance, a rabid aural assault that puts a magnificent exclamation point on the whole record.

This is one of the more interesting and creative death metal albums you’re likely to hear this year. NEKROVAULT take the solid musical foundation of classic death metal and twist that formula in slight, yet significant, ways, resulting in an album that is as atmospheric and eerie as it is savage. The albums production lends itself well to the bands sound, with the raw, murky edge that it possesses elevating the music, and at times making it sound all the more impressive. As far as debut albums go, Totenzug is a masterful and dissonant blend of monstrous death metal, and it will be intriguing to see how they surpass the benchmark they have set with their future output.

Rating: 9/10

Totenzug: Festering Peregrination is out now via Ván Records.

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