Santo subito

Thumbs up for longevity here, although from a productivity point-of-view this batch doesn’t deserve that many accolades, popping up fairly irregularly on the metal map, reminding of themselves in a variety of ways, but not really willing to strain themselves and become a firm unquestionable presence on it. But that’s alright, sometimes an ephemeral murmur is all it takes to conflagrate a setting and turn it into a red-hot mayhem…

and things were going in that exact direction once the excellent debut was unleashed upon the fanbase in the distant 1992, a brutal yet contrived slab of old school death metal which needed very little to capture the unrefined but ear-grabbing riff-entanglements from the early Suffocation exploits. And things were definitely going in that exact direction if the guys hadn’t faltered on “Folter” two years later, a not very focused second instalment where the tight violent pummeling from the first coming was dispersed among bouts of frivolous near-catchy punky/core rhythms and miscalculated acoustic/balladic segments, the band trying to create a blend, intentionally to these ears, between the other two death metal behemoths on Austrian soil, the more jocund non-fussy Pungent Stench and the ambitious more thought-out Disharmonic Orchestra.

An attempt that ultimately failed as said mixture sounded too strained and artificial, the album completely lacking the spontaneity and the gusto of its predecessor. The resultant amalgam stayed around for “… and Hungry Are the Lost” seven years later, presented in a slightly loftier more aggressive manner, but hit the bottom again on “Marinate Your Meat”, another very dubious death/core/punk conglomerate. Under the circumstances, the expectations for the album reviewed here weren’t big at all, the Spanish title turning the trepidations into serious earthshaking tremors.

Well, it’s never too late to debunk all anti-myths, and this is exactly what occurs here, the band, largely the drummer Manfred Perack, the founder and the only permanent member; and Elmar Warmuth, the guitarist and vocalist who joined in 1998, rushing on all fours, producing their finest outing since the “Rhapsody…”. “So, no punk, no core… no shit?” Well, not in such annoyingly copious amounts as before, the guys venting out quite a bit of aggression with a sequence of short bursting, vintage retro death metal cuts (“Extraterrestial Blowjob Luziferism”, “Stop Talking -Start Dying”), also winning a couple of points from the highly-imaginative song-title department. The core segments (“Faith, Fist, Fire”) are more nonchalantly served, cancelled outright by the more serious near-progressive achievements (“Barbecue... and Me”), the obligatory joke song (“The Evil One”) a noisy industrial outtake. The thing is that such distractions aren’t many at all, the band keeping the mosh going all around, sometimes with a catchier melodic sting (“Partially Executed Self-Cannibalism”), sometimes with two eyes on the technical (the excellent shredder “666 Modified Microwave Possession”), the title-track a diverse roller-coaster with myriad moods and rhythms rushing in quick succession.

A nice crystal-clear sound quality is by all means a plus, facilitating the musicians’ efforts, Warmuth’s intimidating but authoritative deathly shouts always comprehensible and articulate, the band exuding confidence and sincerity, having no intentions whatsoever in re-inventing the wheel or in carving another niche on the contemporary metal horizon. There are no surprises in stall, and this should be the more viable alternative in this case, the Austrian veterans simply having no right to further blemish their career, also having in mind how infrequent their descents are. The classic death metal roster by all means needs the old dogs to keep the audience on their toes, showing the young upstarts the way, averting disasters, and possibly cooking another burning rhapsody as a tasty filling main course.