INIQUITOUS SAVAGERY

It may have started with relatively high-profile bands like SUFFOCATION and CRYPTOPSY, but brutal death metal has long since transcended its origins and marched down the left-hand path towards something darker, nastier, more brutal and more gleefully twisted. Over the last couple of decades, a significant number of bands have abandoned any and all commercial considerations and dedicated themselves to making the most hideous, visceral, intricate and musically punishing music imaginable. Some of this stuff is so underground, it's choking on worms, but there have still been a few certified classic albums released in the name of brutal death metal over the years, and INIQUITOUS SAVAGERY's "Subversion of The Psyche" is definitely among them.

Released in 2015, when everything seemed much simpler, the Scottish band's debut stood out as a refined and borderline psychotic example of the genre's uniquely uncommercial power. It may have taken them the best part of a decade to conjure a follow-up, but when your songs are this deranged and unfathomable, taking time to get them whipped into shape only seems sensible. Pieced together over the last few years, "Edifice Of Vicissitudes" aims to equal and maybe even surpass the debut's terrifying demonstration of pitch-black, impenetrable prowess.

They make light work of that challenge. "Edifice…" has a vastly superior production to its predecessor, and INIQUITOUS SAVAGERY's ensemble performances are more potent as a result. Although undeniably vicious and sonically punchy, these songs have a live and dangerous feel to them, as brute force collides with artful dexterity, and everybody bangs their heads until they see stars and puke blood. The tone is set by "Casualty Of Diabolic Trial": five minutes of defiantly weird and difficult death metal that rips along like a runaway train on a rickety track toward a fiery, final destination. Razor-sharp and air-tight, it is a performance that speaks volumes about how much INIQUITOUS SAVAGERY have poured into their second album.

There are certainly less obtuse moments here: "Synaptic Cull" is far more direct with its churning, obsidian assault, and the convoluted hell-maze of "Omnipotence Negates Self-Affliction" weaves old-school riffs into a smoldering tapestry of cruel dissonance. But brutality rules here, and it's a pumped-up and priapic strain of sonic violence that dominates. Squalid and abhorrent anti-songs like "Narcotic Exsanguination" and recent single (ha!) "Drenched In Righteous Offal" are disgustingly heavy and musically perverse, but there is groove and ingenuity lurking around every blind corner too.

Not brutality for the sake of it, then, but an exercise in wild, aggressive music that dares to regard this militant form of death metal as a righteous artform in its own right. "Edifice Of Vicissitudes" is impeccable, top-tier terrorism, and a fine way to stamp out the last few glowing embers of another terrifying year.