The end of humanity. On the cover is an old hitman holding a silenced pistol. God who’s about to put a bullet in Humanity?

The album is Divultion’s first. The Ukrainian band out of Simferopol has been a musical unit since June 2005, but only saw its efforts come to full fruition with the early 2011 release of The End of Humanity. Titles like Worms Under Skin, Eat My Guts and Rotting give a strong suggestion of Brutal Death Metal and reality proves this right at least partly. Divultion does focus on delivering a product that is as loud and harsh as it could possibly be. On the contrary, there is a strong technical focus in the eight songs – there’s also an outro with Boondock Saints outtakes – that The End of Humanity is rich.

Just got a message about this band called Shturm. I cannot begin to compare this to anything I’ve ever heard, but it’s good. Boy is it GOOD!

Shturm is a group of four guys from Krasnodar, Russia, a city located in the South-Western corner of the country. Taking a quick look through the band’s profile page on Encyclopaedia Metallum, my guess is the band started out in 2003, doing a brutal sort of Black Metal. Their first record came out in 2004 and carries the title unambiguous title Fresh Christian Meat.

Stepping forward in time to the current year, the band released its third album, called Karmaruna. I don’t proclaim to have heard anything more of that than the one song for which they released a video, but that does seem to suggest the band have drastically developed their style since 2004. I’ve lined up the video past the jump.

The good thing about EPs is that they’re quick to review. And so, when normal, paying work’s riding you whippingly, it’s easier to just review another EP than to dive into a full-fledged studio album that takes days to get through to and figure out completely. Some may have noticed: work has been riding my poor scrawny ass lately and as a result I haven’t been overly active writing here – it’s only thanks to the other DMB writers that you continued to get your daily fix – so now that I’ve got a bit of time, what better thing to do than chuck in another EP review?

The disadvantage of EPs is of course the same trait that is their virtue: they’re short. So when you stumble upon this really neat piece of work, cravings may be left unsatisfied. With Face of Ruin it’s a bit like that. The Milwaukee based proggy Death outfit released the EP in mid-2011 after they stuck three songs on it, supplying a quarter of an hour worth of shape-shifting emotions and mental states.

As per the usual for me lately I’m short on time. Running a small electrical contracting business and having my one employee out for family troubles means I get to do every-fuckin-thing. It sucks. What doesn’t suck is a discovery I made a few days ago in the form of one of many bands known as Abyssal. This one hails from the UK and came into existence in 2010 before unleashing their debut, Denouement, on the second day of this year.

The sound on this beast is what you may expect from a band called Abyssal as it’s straight out of the abyss. Imagine if you mixed the most blistering elements of Black Metal with the finer points of Brutal Death Metal and topped it off with some dissonance reminiscent of Ulcerate. This is an album that will kick the shit out of you, seriously. And it won’t cost you a cent, because these generous bastards have released it as a straight-up free download via Bandcamp.

It’s weird, considering the name of this blog, but for some reason I’m not doing too many Death Metal reviews. I think I this is my second or third one, and to be precise, it’s my first Brutal Death Metal release. Exciting.

About half a month ago the boys themselves approach us via Facebook, and their description of “Death Grind / Black Metal / Melodic Brutality” appealed to me, so I took the job. At first though, I was hesitant as in my experience, Brutal Death Metal bands got fairly low grades. That is, in comparison to bands from other genres like Black Metal and Hardcore. However, when I first turned on this 17-minute long piece, I was quite surprised to hear something which grabbed me. Usually, I feel that in Brutal Death Metal, the heaviness is drowning out in its own blood, and together with this, my interest for the music. Corpse Filled Caskets does not contain the loudest riffing, but there is some really interesting drumming and riffing going on which, together with the witty dialogues in between make for an enjoyable quarter of an hour.

Where my prejudice about Norwegian Metal makes me expect all Metal from Norway is Black Metal, I’ve got a similar – and equally fucked-up – rule of thumb about Sweden. It’s either Old-school Death Metal type of stuff or Melodeath that they produce there. Absolute rubbish of course and the examples are numerous. Still, it’s a bit of a default thing to expect I guess.

Today we add another entry to our list of examples that counter that coarse generalization: Humanity’s Last Breath. They’re a five-piece from the city of Helsingborg, where I know also Soilwork is from. A typical line-up of two guitars, a bass, some bongos and a voice, these guys produce something undeniably brutal and aggressive, often a shit storm of blasts and chugs, but also often melodic and harmonious. That is what I pulled from the band’s latest release, which was sent out into the world in early 2011 as their second EP since forming in 2009.

It’s a good day for those with a liking for stuff that’s brutal, grinding and bloody, because, dear boys and girls, it’s time for some mutilating Death Metal straight out of Ireland. The 2004-formed band hails straight out of Dublin and does things the loud way. With Skewered, the album they released in October, they stick their first flag into the soil of planet Brainfuckery-by-Riffs-and-Gutturals.

So yeah, that’s currently tearing my eardrums to shreds. Much like a dagger stuck in my ear. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad. In fact, it doesn’t mean shit. It’s just a figure of fuckin’ speech. Let me try to give you an overview of what Skewered is, what it does and give you some grip to help you determine whether or not this is for you. In short: it’s review time, kiddos!

It’s been quiet here for a while, which is due some issues with my hosting provider. This seems to be a yearly recurring theme or something, though thankfully this one was solved rather quickly. They do tend to respond rather quickly.

Anyfuck, we’re back now and we’re back with Arbiter, which was a suggestion by Rufio. He described the American band’s music as ”a heavier, Djentier Omnium Gatherum”, but also admitted he ”didn’t poke around at much”. Can’t blame him, but if he had, he would’ve found out the band certainly isn’t comparable to Omnium Gatherum.

Instead, these five dudes from Charlevoix, Michigan, do some proper brutal Death Metal with distinctive Deathcore elements. Having listened to some of their stuff, they seem to me like a bunch of breakdown kings, which I know will put half of you off. The other half, or whatever the exact split is, might actually enjoy several shitloads of the band’s getting-hit-by-a-freight-train experience.

Visitor Simon was out in Montréal a while ago, where he discovered some new material that was to his liking. Bookakee is one of them, and they do Technical Brutal Death Cumsplatter Metal. Other than that the band consists of five guys and that they love to kill Super Mario on stage, my intel on these guys is pretty limited.

So, I’ll just proceed with giving you the tunes. First one is a song called Bookakee Blast, the first song from their first EP, released last June.

At first this EP’s music and me eluded each other, like the North and South poles have been eluding each other for quite a while now. Then I found out, once again – and you wonder whether I brushed out my brain when I did my teeth this morning – that Death Metal comes to its full right only – ONLY – when it’s played at volume settings that kill small children and critters smaller than a medium-sized dog.

And from that moment on I started to enjoy Capture Release Kill, Ireland’s Guttrench’s latest release, more by the second. In the style of Brutal Death Metal it’s pretty goddamn brutal Death Metal! But more than just a gathering of noisy components, Guttrench brings a lot of fuckin’ talent to the party. I’d go as far as to call this intelligently put together, which is not something you can say of most Brutal Death releases. And moreover, it just sounds very pleasant, except if you’re a toddler or a medium-sized dog perhaps.