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DEPRAVER
Necrocryptic Obliteration

Iron Fortress (2025)
Rating: 7.5/10

Some scary unseen force has been causing menacing rumbles beneath the streets of California, but now the cause has an identity – Depraver. After a batch of EPs and a split with Vrenth, Depraver unleashes a hellish full-length album that stains the clouds with a toxic, black hue. For 43 minutes, step into the billowing smoke and succumb to this bestial cacophony that will transport you back to the hellish shadows first cast by the blackened thrash souls of Sarcofago, Sodom etc.

This is the sound of charcoaled death metal, rancid in its blistering percussion and seething from its vocal channels to the point of acidic burns appearing on your flesh. Depraver is a rabid cult of four and when they have names such as Rat Kicker (vocals and guitar), Unholy Diver (guitar), Val Halla (bass) and The Sewagist (drums) you know you’re in for something filthy and blasphemous, and right from the off the storm rages.

Forget the patter of rain or rumble of distant thunder, this is a full on onslaught that immediately hammers the windows and shakes the doors as ‘Drowning In Eternal Woe’ launches itself out of the basement. The vocals are a scathing echo, dredged from the murky, primitive depths of the 80s South American underground. They are matched by the foul, churning fires of the bestial, barbaric guitars; everything here fumes and boils with such destructive intent.

‘Destruction As The Cause Of Coming Into Being’ features some catchy melodic traipsing amidst the blackened wisps, but there’s a truly sinister layer here, voiced by the sneering vocals. The effect is something akin to a swirling biting mist erupting from a dank cavern to the soundtrack of its own icy manoeuvres.

Hints of chugging Bolt Thrower come to the fore with ‘Pro Patria Mori’, a measured yet grinding black-death furnace contrasted by the slower, doomier aches of ‘Surpassing The Flesh’. Similar trudges of doom are expressed on the opening chords of ‘Avatar Of Suffering’ before the eventual ascension into deathly thrash. To an extent it’s all reasonably accessible black-death with the only real shifts being between mid-tempo and faster passages and a few dizzying leads.

Depraver could be far more evil-sounding considering the influence of the South American and early Teutonic scenes, but Necrocryptic Obliteration is still a hefty hotbed of unholy mayhem designed to scorch your bones and boil your innards with its constructions of organised chaos.

Neil Arnold

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