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NORFULTHING
Norfulthing EP

Self-released (2022)
Rating: 7.5/10

Here’s a mysterious Finnish duo that comes masked in balaclavas against a snowy backdrop. This is Norfulthing’s debut offering, and in typical Finnish fashion it’s some classy underground death metal featuring some truly gruesome vocal grunts.

Opening track ‘Dots’ showcases why Finland is such a hot-bed of creativity when it comes to extreme metal because with this track you get some strange musical designs alongside the more straight-forward gnashing. A few film samples, a sense of industrial mechanism and those chugging riffs and we’re on to a rather original slab.

‘Anger Turned Outward’ is one of the more aggressive outbursts on this six-track affair, which again is propelled by the hammering drums and that clanking riffage supported by the equally rough bass.

This will of course be labelled as death metal but there’s more of an unorthodox feel, and again I really like the film samples entwined within the strange haze of extremity. This is the sort of release a label like Peaceville or Earache might have put out in the late 80s and more so early 90s, such is its peculiar aggression.

‘Stochastic Teratomism’, ‘Beset By Leeches’ and ‘Eyes Clouded By Vicious Visions’ billow black smoke as they rattle with a fervour. It really is an interesting mesh of wiry aggression bolstered by the clanking bass and the relentless percussion.

Closer ‘Hepatological Confirmation To Monstrosity’ rambles like some lost Defecation track. And that’s the feel I get here… not strictly death metal, or grind, or hardcore, but a mixing of aggressive flavours to produce a volatile environment where all instruments become one great machine of antagonism.

I’m looking forward to more from this duo such is their nature to provide slightly unorthodox yet seething rants.

Neil Arnold

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