- Country: United States
- Style: Death metal
- Label: Dark Descent Records
- Release date: 30 October 2015
Old-school death metal had become a very crowded room by 2015, and Horrendous walked into it carrying something most of their peers had forgotten: melody that actually goes somewhere. Anareta has the grime and the guttural snarl, but the songs are written like puzzles, with riffs that twist back on themselves and bass lines that refuse to just follow the guitars.
“The Nihilist” kicks the door in with lopsided thrash, and “Ozymandias” immediately shows how far the band has come, running past seven minutes without a single dead spot. Then comes “Siderea”, a short instrumental so catchy it could have closed side one of a Gothenburg record in 1995. “Polaris” locks into a crooked mid-tempo groove, and “Acolytes” is the album’s maze, all hairpin turns and sudden harmonised leads.
Damian Herring and Matt Knox share vocals and guitars, and Jamie Knox’s drumming gives everything a loose, human swing instead of the usual triggered machine-gun. The closing “The Solipsist (Mirrors Gaze)” slows to a mournful, heavy crawl and ends the record on a note that lingers. The ghost of late-era Death is everywhere here, but this is no tribute act. Essential.
Best tracks:
Ozymandias
Siderea
Acolytes
The Solipsist (Mirrors Gaze)
Author’s rating: 9.0/10
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