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SEVEN DOORS
The Final Gate EP

Iron Fortress (2025)
Rating: 7.5/10

Keeping the UK death metal flag flying is Ryan Wills, a horror-obsessed musician also responsible for last year’s Freudstein album, Echoes From Beyond, which is cool if you like music akin to horror movie scores. With Seven Doors, this is another excellent release in a long line that also includes several singles, 2021 EP The Gates Of Hell, a split project and 2023 full-length album Feast Of The Repulsive Dead.

This new EP features four songs and runs just shy of 20 minutes. It’s great to see a track called ‘Deep River Savages’, named I assume after the 1972 Italian cannibal exploitation movie. Anyway, the title cut kicks in with some maniacal lead work from Wills alongside vicious haste and some Glenn Benton-styled demonic barks.

As the EP progresses it’s obvious that Ryan Wills is the master of carving out crisp yet chunky riffs. Their catchiness is undeniable as ‘A Beautiful Stuffed Corpse’ shudders with intensity. To an extent this is death metal plucked straight from the mid-to-late 90s, not bogged down by any squalid muck or filth but quite straightforward in its measured belligerence. ‘A Beautiful Stuffed Corpse’ features a choppy, frothing vocal display which works well in tandem with the guttural kicks of the riffs.

‘Deep River Savages’ hits close to the bone, providing hasty flurries amongst the juggernaut riffage and tight melodies. Some of the slower chords veer towards a doomy ache before the reintroduction of the speedy blizzards.

The EP then closes with a rabid version of Death’s classic ‘Mutilation’, a feverish cauldron of spitted vocalisations and relentless hammering. It’s a fitting way indeed to round off another solid slab from a man who is becoming one of the nation’s most prolific deathheads.

Neil Arnold

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