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CORPSE WORSHIP
Necroresonance

Coyote (2022)
Rating: 6/10

Russian death metal act Corpse Worship (great name!) is a trio that formed two years ago and released its debut, Horror Chronicles, last year. The artwork of this second album adds an extra point on to the rating, although admittedly I expected a far murkier opus.

Basically, this is solid, aggressive death metal with plenty of melodic, at times black / death nuances, as well as strong Swedish / Finnish dashes. I do like the vocal display here of Theodor Forrest, his style is deep, chesty yet almost decipherable, while behind him the drums of Anatoly Chebotar really do shudder.

After a while the tracks do blur into one but the album is short enough to not bore. So we get different ranges of pace from the off with ‘Miraculously Resurrected’, whereby a buzzing Swedish riff takes control and delivers dollops of catchiness before a rather melodic solo intervenes. Everything about the track, and the album for that matter, feels steady and never resorting to squalid doominess or anything remotely cavernous, even though it’s old school in its vibe.

‘Twisted In Ecstasy’ features more excellent axe work from Artem Mozhaev, and I’m reminded of acts such as Dismember and Desultory. So there’s nothing new here but you won’t be let down by its straight-forward approach.

The likes of ‘Name On The Tombstone’, ‘Underworld Rats’, ‘1000 Graves’ and the title track all have familiar structures. Again there are strains of Entombed, but it doesn’t necessarily feel quite as old as, say, Left Hand Path (1990). Instead, there are mid-90s vapours floating through the veins of this creation.

I think the lack of identity, and I mean this for a lot of today’s bands, is a concern, because it’s okay paying homage to the classic bands and albums of the scene – after all, they’ll be talked about for years to come – but I’m not sure acts like Corpse Worship will be on people’s lips even this time next year.

There’s some incredible death metal around nowadays, and I respect what Corpse Worship is doing, but it’s not enough to stand out from the crowd even with such wondrously fetid cover art which, sadly, isn’t matched by the content within.

Neil Arnold

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