ALBUM REVIEW: Umbravorous – Perversor

Chile’s PERVERSOR are a band who have forged a significant reputation for producing some of the most acerbic, speed-driven and intense extreme metal you are likely to find. The band has a sound that is firmly rooted in the old school black, thrash and death metal scenes, with a primitive approach and a powerful sound that never fails to disappoint. Over the course of twelve years, three full lengths, two EP’s and two splits, one with fellow countrymen ISTENGOAT and another with the legendary American war metallers MORBOSIDAD, they have proved themselves as a band with a solid and aggressive sound. Their third full length album, Umbravorous, comes three and a half years after their excellent Anticosmocrator album, and further cements their legacy as one of the shining lights of the South American extreme metal scene.

PERVERSOR kick things off with Deadly Poison And Black Fire, a really strong opening gambit that bursts out of the speakers with a blistering pace, a thick, crushing guitar sound and primal, chaotic drums. It’s a short, sharp shock of ferocious, thrash inflected black metal that doesn’t stay around any longer than it needs to. It’s an energetic, frenetic and aggressive piece of music from start to finish, and it proves to be an excellent way to kick the album off. Umbravorous‘ title track is a fierce, raging piece of music that goes straight for the jugular, with buzz saw riffs, tight, chaotic drumming and hellish howls all creating an impenetrable wall of noise and aggression which doesn’t let up for a single second. The caustic, melody tinged guitars possess an intensity and a sound that goes hand in hand with the acidic shrieks and scatter brained, urgent drumming patterns really well, making for another aural assault that sticks long in the memory.

Continuing in a very similar vein, The Dwell couples crunching, razor sharp guitars with cacophonous drums, resulting in a dark, bellicose offering that has just a tinged of punk in its sound to provide plenty of piss and venom to the already heady mix of distorted hooks and feral singing. At various points, it reaches such a speed and force that it seems as if the whole song will go completely off the rails at any moment, managing to just about hold itself together until it comes to a grinding halt three and a half minutes before it began. Formidable Destino follows the same formula that the first three tracks have adhered to, with blisteringly fast musicianship, characterised by restless drums, powerful shredding and bestial roars. There are a few, brief moments where the music momentarily slows its pace, but only to add a crushing emphasis to the chords and crashing cymbals, before diving headlong back into the whirlwind of unerring viciousness.

Military Industrial Complex is yet another blindly fast and furious slab of visceral black metal. With breakneck drumming providing a good backdrop to the rest of the song, the guitars meander between full, thunderous chords and precise tremolo sections, with a solid groove underpinning most of the playing on here. The vocals maintain their rabid, demonic edge and carve through the mix, being every bit as grating and monstrous as every other note of music on here. It’s over almost as soon as it begins, and adds a little more power to PERVERSOR‘s violent and frenzied sound.  Somnambulus keeps a hold of the groove that the previous song had and manages to nail it, injecting some slight, but much needed, variety into the bands sound. With dense, thrash inspired sections and discordant, jarring flourishes, it adds a little musical depth to the overall cacophony of this album, and proves to be a refreshing change to the formula that has dominated every song up until this point.

The Excrements Of Infinity Are The Vices Of Divinity takes it’s foot off the pedal to an extent, and has a lot more focus and precision, although the dizzying chaos that is the bands hallmark is still firmly entrenched in the sound. The drumming is far more steady, the guitars are certainly more diverse and hook laden, and the vocals go a little deeper than the caustic howls that have marked this record until now. It’s a great song with an impressive, death metal undercurrent that gives this song in particular a far bigger sound. Virtual Anthropophagy is very much of the same mould as the songs that came before it. Unrelentingly fast, with impressive guitars and a dirty tone, this song takes PERVERSOR into far more energetic and intense realms than we’ve heard before on this album. This is easily the most aggressive and chaotic song on the whole album, which is really saying something as the entire album is cut from the same cloth. The whole song oozes with bile and rage, and it ends up being all the better for it.

Umbravorous‘ penultimate, and shortest, song, Merchants Of Spirits, has some excellent blackened death metal riffs which really make this song stand out. The song is decidedly more structured and focused than most of the rest of the album, and there’s plenty of great guitar and vocal parts for the listener to really sink their teeth into. The speed and auditory insanity are still present, but much more scaled back than it is at any other point on this record. D.M.T, the closing track of the album, is, surprise, another fast beastly song, dripping with anger and force. There are some more mid-tempo sections on offer, which act as a momentary respite from the onslaught of monolithic battering that most of the rest of the song comprises. It’s got some great, borderline hard rock riffs, and some of the most intricate and expert musicianship on the whole album, providing some especially amazing drumming, which helps to usher in the albums end on a relatively high note.

This is a great album with only one downside; PERVERSOR clearly have a formula, and don’t do much to deviate from it at any point on the album, which at certain points makes it seem almost repetitive. This is ferocious and speed driven from back to front, with only a few fleeting areas in amongst everything to provide any break from it. Luckily, the music is brilliant in its own right, so this lack of variation doesn’t grate the listener too much. The sound is clearly takes its cues from old school black and thrash bands, which makes it all the more interesting to listen to. If you like your black metal fast, cacophonous and with a dense, dirty tone, then PERVERSOR should be right up your street.

Rating: 7/10

Umbravorous is out now via Pulverised Records.

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