ASPHYX — Deathhammer (review)

ASPHYX — Deathhammer album cover Album · 2012 · Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3.5/5 ·
UMUR
"Deathhammer" is the 7th full-length studio album by Dutch death metal act Asphyx (or the 8th if you count the once unreleased "Embrace the Death (1996)"). The album was released through Century Media Records in February 2012. The band returned to the scene in 2009 with "Death... The Brutal Way" after a nine year recording break. An album that was generally well received by both critics and fans.

"Deathhammer" continues down the by now trademark death/doom metal style that Asphyx have more or less practised from their inception in the late eighties. It´s filthy, raw and brutal in a no frills old school fashion. In Martin van Drunen the band have one of the most distinct sounding growling vocalists on the scene and as always he delivers his tortured growls in a fiercely aggressive fashion. He is of course famous for his membership of both Pestilence and Hail of Bullits, but it´s like Asphyx is where he truly belongs. Or at least where his unique voice sounds most at home.

While the sound production is a bit clearer than usual, "Deathhammer" is still a pretty ugly and raw sounding album. The opening trio of tracks: "Into the Timewastes", "Deathhammer" and "Minefield" will probably blow you head right off and leave your mutilated corpse in the gutter, but they also pretty much tell the story of how "Deathhammer" sounds. The combination of powerful and rather catchy tracks like the first two mentioned and the doomy death metal of the latter mentioned is what we usually expect from Asphyx and this time around is no different. The riffs may be simple and the rhythms too but most of the tracks on the album are damn catchy and there is enough variation between tracks to easily tell them apart.

Besides not having a murky dark sound production like most other releases in the genre, "Deathhammer" features just about every other element that fans of old school death metal crave. The music is well composed and memorable, the musicianship are strong and the sound production powerful. I have no complaints and a 3.5 - 4 star (75%) rating is deserved.
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