Greetings, Decibel readers!
Funny thing, we somehow managed to include two acts from Perth, Australia on this week’s list who blend old-school American and Swedish death metal styles together. And on top of that, we even included TWO BANDS with totally unreadable logos that resemble piles of firewood tossed together. And it gets better! Four out of five albums listed here have some representation of skulls on the album cover.
Look, it’s metal. You came here for metal, and that’s what you’re gonna get. Enjoy!
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Ashen – Godless Oath
From our premiere of Godless Oath:
Formed pre-COVID in the far-flung city of Perth, Ashen merge the Swedish and American styles into a cohesive beast, one that uses the HM-2 sound and crushes it with a melange of monstrous Floridian and New York paradigms. This is modern-day death metal infused with the spirit of death metal pre-1992.
Stream: Apple Music
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Crypt Crawler – Future Usurper
Our second Perth-based act features a similar blend of death metal forms, albeit with a more obvious nod to late-era Death. Listen to “The Mouth of Death” to hear what I’m talking about, lots of Sound of Perseverance going on there, along with touches of Hypocrisy and other 90s Swedish legends.
Stream: Apple Music
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Decrepisy – Emetic Communion
You got some great representation of modern death metal talent here, featuring members of Vastum, Ritual Necromancy and Funebrarum all in one powerful unit. This is the sound of terrifying monsters awaking from their caves to feast on the dead. The riffs practically drip from your speakers as you listen.
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Perilaxe Occlusion – Raytraces of Death
A delicious marrying of death metal, black metal, and doom metal into a triarchy of brutality. Pay particular attention to the grooves that carry the catchy and memorable riffs, which then crash into blasting thunderclaps of rapid-fire snare hits, this is what makes a record worth jamming on again and again.
Stream: Apple Music
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Yawning Man – Rock Formations (re-release)
And now for something completely different. They’re not from Australia, you can read their logo, and they don’t growl. They don’t sing at all, actually, as Yawning Man is a purely instrumental desert-rock act re-releasing it’s 2005 album in cassette form. There’s been a flurry of activity in this style since then, and much of it has gone on to influence big acts like Mastodon and Baroness. A classic worth revisiting on your tape deck.
Stream: Apple Music
