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BLOODBATH
Survival Of The Sickest

Napalm (2022)
Rating: 8/10

Returning with their campiest cover art to date, death metal monsters Bloodbath unleashes album number six.

Nick Holmes (Paradise Lost) is once again growling orders over those meaty, ear-shredding riffs across 11 tracks and 45 minutes of chunky, ferocious extremity. Imagine dashes of Cannibal Corpse fused with the twisted, perverse stirrings of Morbid Angel and that’s where this album sort of sits, but there’s plenty more to get your fangs into.

At times there are even reminders of early Benediction as Holmes coughs out the chops, but it never veers from ferocity, continually ploughing hefty chunks of earth via its grinding drums while the axes and bass combine to clash as monolithic slabs of frothing menace.

Somehow Bloodbath has always managed to stay fresh yet without exhibiting any real sense of originality and that’s testament to their driving, hammering aggression. When you jump into tracks such as ‘Putrefying Corpse’ (featuring Napalm Death vocalist Barney Greenway), ‘Dead Parade’, ‘Born Infernal’ (featuring Gorguts frontman Luc Lemay) and ‘Tales Of Melting Flesh’ your brain is thrown into a blender and turned to mush.

The tracks come thick, fast and often short, yet strangely bereft of any putridity or actual atmosphere which is required by many acts to pull them through. Bloodbath just exists as a no frills yet foaming tide. The guys probably won’t thank me for saying this but Survival Of The Sickest is consistent, solid and reliable death metal… and there’s nothing wrong with that. Favourite tracks? The thrashing rage of ‘Malignant Maggot Therapy’ and the gnashing groove ooze of ‘To Die’ (featuring former Morgoth singer Marc Grewe).

Neil Arnold

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