BRODEQUIN - HARBINGER OF WAR
Now a vile and grotesque entity shedding blood wantonly for two and a half decades, Brodequin have found a new home on the highly-revered label Season of Mist, a marriage made in the humid bowels of offal-laced depravity if there ever was one. Themed heavily on fetishizing on the utmost sadism delivered by instruments of torture throughout mankind's brutal history toward one another, Brodequin seems to know that these traits inherently lie within us all and that some of us are really, really not shy about expressing them.
With no hesitation whatsoever, "Diabolic Edict" lashes out with thundering blasts and female moans and groans in the background, indicating someone is suffering. Vocalist Jamie Bailey has an awesome way of delivering the most menacing guttural vocals to preach the ways of sadism like only the foulest and most determined death metal maniacs can. "Theresiana" is a lesson in speed with bludegeoning precision bass pedals leveling entire villages and plundering all of resources. "Of Pillars and Trees" may slow things down a bit (meaning a breakdown is actually present for seemingly once ever) but the savagery still remains like a bullwhip across the derrier repeatedly, along with the dirty distortion on "Maleficum" as if uppers were consumed before a flogging of the... less fortunate, let's just say. Atonal and abrasive, "Suffocation in Ash" has a slight militant tone to its battery, almost as if an artillery barrage will rain down across the enemy's border to teach them all about compliance. As we end with the title track, and and just over four minutes long the longest one of all, shows just how misanthropic these barbarians can get and how degenerate their terrifying onslaught is. Not much for riffs and other pretentiousness in their style and truly no need; just rough, ugly, and completely deviant in composition!
What has intrigued me about Brodequin over the years in that not only have they kept their style and methods true over the years, they have also shunned the limelight and rock star circus antics that many American death metal acts have embarrassed themselves by embracing. This is true metal of death, as uncompromising and depraved as it gets!
9/10
