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ENVENOMED
Manifest Of The Primordial Essence

Burning Coffin / Clandestine Productions (2022)
Rating: 8.5/10

The debut full-length album from this Chilean band of brain-busters is sure to warm – or possibly torch – your cockles this winter. Combining death and thrash metal, Manifest Of The Primordial Essence comes racing out of its squalid hole with some of the raspiest vocals I’ve heard for a long time.

The man behind such maniacal retorts is Necrowolf (aka Javier Peralta) who, alongside Marcelo Sepúlveda, brings the ear-shredding axe work too. Chris Palacios (bass) and Antonio Kurt (drums) complete Envenomed’s line-up and add to the frenetic nature of this hostile record that isn’t afraid to veer towards a blackened thrash style in scarring your already malformed features.

Manifest Of The Primordial Essence is an ultra-fast album that scurries like a pack of rabid rats which nip, rip and tear at your flesh as you frantically drown in their hairy horror. This blazing bout of aggression has been a long time coming because these guys formed 12 years ago and since then have only released a couple of demos and an EP (Maleficent Supreme Incarnation), and it’s been a while since those.

Lurking in the darkness, Envenomed has somehow patiently constructed this audible blitzkrieg based around hasty riffs, hyper percussion and those nasty, hoarse vocal sneers. And so for half-an-hour you get pummelled and whipped by the racing, volatile and, above all, blistering ‘Omnes Vacivs’, ‘Ignis Fatuus’ and a whole host of similarly constructed examples of frothing brutality.

‘Envenomancer’ is streaked with black / thrash blood, and that’s the scalding theme here. Just check out the barbaric bass rattle on ‘Active Cosmic Putrefaction’ and the wild, demented solos on ‘Makiavellian Pact’; both bristling with a striking, barbaric energy.

Of all the stark, retaliatory strikes on offer it’s difficult to find a space to breath within the entangled chaos. The old school, organic clatter of ‘Dead World’, the thorny, rampant belligerence of ‘Chaos Dimension’… it’s all here – an intense, abrasive machine that remains unrelenting and confrontational from start to finish.

As subtle as being raked by machine gun fire, Envenomed’s long-awaited debut makes you feel like you’ve swallowed razor blades and crapped out glass, and I’m fine with that.

Neil Arnold

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