Anticosmocrator

I first encountered Santiago-based Perversor a few years ago in the form of their first full-length, Cult of Destruction. Their latest, Anticosmocrator, continues the path they'd gotten on with that first LP in the form of a raw assault of thrashy death metal with some blackened overtones. Inhale, the first track, sets the tone for most of the others on the album. The production's a bit muddy and the guitar's rather thing and trebly, without a lot of emphasis put on the bass, but the drums stand out, and anyway, this is a very rhythm-oriented band, without any guitar solos to speak of. The vocals of Torrid are a hoarse, hissing growl with enough reverb to sound like they're coming down a long hallway, and drummer Knernet's work on the skins are a perfect match for the fierceness of the thrashing, be they fill-laden blastbeats such as the ones on Bestial Path or arrhythmic, Kreator-style riff-emphasis. The melodies aren't particularly special -- none of the clever hook-writing of Skeletonwitch or its ilk -- but they do let the band thrash around an individual riff with incredibly tight timing. A favorite of mine was Awakening of the Ancient Ones, with a chorus that would have been shouted on a thrash album, but here was repeatedly shrieked at top volume, emphasized by absolutely ferocious double-kicking. Perversor's sound is simple and unsubtle as a steel-toed kick to the head, and a lot of what makes it succeed on Anticosmocrator is its raw dirtiness and speed. Infinite, another favorite of mine, is an excellent example of this. The only times when everyone isn't flailing away at top speed is when they're emphasizing the end of every stanza of both verse and chorus with a brutal wall of sound, the musical equivalent of shouting the last three words of every line. The aptly-named Old Temples of Death, which veers more towards death metal stylings, is also expertly done, with a smoother and cleaner attack that reminded me in places of what Hellhammer might have been in a more modern age with a different vocalist. Metal Massacre, the final track, seems more primitive and mindless than the rest of the tracks, though they jack the heaviness through the roof. I'll bet it plays well in the mosh pit, though. There's a lot of blackened death and thrash out there, but I returned more than a few times to Cult of Destruction over the last few years; something about it stuck with me. Anticosmocrator is better and, in my opinion, even more ripping than its predecessor. Fans of early Kreator and Sodom, or of Skeletonwitch, are all likely to enjoy this speed-infused concoction.