SonikGoat
It’s always great to see how many people are actively engaged in talking about, sharing, name-dropping, and posting new music. It’s part of what makes underground scenes so rewarding—the word-of-mouth aspect of how music finds its way to the most receptive ears. Especially in a fast-moving, worldwide scene like Metal, a band can quickly ascend from relative obscurity to cult status, propelled by the rapid, viral nature of word-of-mouth “promotion”. These days, it feels like a great album by a band I’ve never encountered lands on my radar at least once a week, if not more.
That being said, sometimes the dizzying pace of “new” music threatens to bury the recent and not-so-recent. Since I, like many, follow several other types of music, I often find myself missing out on highly rated bands—sometimes for years. Therefore, one of the greatest duties we can fulfill as fans is to remind ourselves and others of the great bands that may have slipped under the radar, just before the spotlight moves on to someone else. These antipodeans may have seen founding member Tim Aldridge depart (leaving vocalist Simon Dower as the only remaining “original”), but they remain committed to establishing an ongoing legacy in ultraviolence and deserve your full attention.
Abramelin is a band with one foot firmly planted in the pre-internet days, where geographical location posed the ultimate barrier to a band’s progression from obscurity to scene staple. Often described as Australia’s Death Metal pioneers, they disbanded after releasing a couple of albums between 1994 and 2000, before returning for live performances in 2016. They finally unleashed a comeback record with 2020’s Never Enough Snuff.
I’m probably not alone in discovering this band thanks to the exploits of guitarist Matt Wilcock, who spent about six years with English Death Metal dandies Akercocke, among others, between his appearance on Abramelin‘s Deadspeak in 2000 and now. His super-fast technique and precision are always a pleasure to hear. To me, it sounds like his ability to inject classic metal melodic flourishes, along with the requisite savagery, has been given a greater platform to shine on Sins Of The Father compared to Never Enough Snuff.
Despite Wilcock’s distinctive, “tasteful” lead heroics, this band is never going to indulge in sub-genre hopping or overly progressive structures. Abramelin plays Death Metal with some death-grind dynamics, aligning them with the likes of Dying Fetus and Cannibal Corpse. The pacing is relentless, with intensity and speed rarely deviating from song to song. The overall tone is one of repetition—the axe chop, the hammer bludgeon, the gleefully one-pitch death growls. The lyrical subject matter is the kind of derivative, faux-misogynistic gore poetry that’s only worthwhile insofar as it raises a spurting, severed middle finger at any pretense of political correctness.
Although I freely admit that I tend to focus my listening on the more dissonant and experimental realms of Metal, there’s no denying the appeal of a well-constructed, well-performed straight-up Death Metal album every now and then. For those whose tastes lean toward the bloody and bludgeoning, Sins Of The Father will not disappoint. Though, if you were to threaten me with a bloody cleaver, I’d probably point a shaking finger at its 2020 comeback as just slightly the superior record of the two.
Label: Hammerheart Records
Release date: 4 October, 2024
Website: https://hammerheart.bandcamp.com/album/sins-of-the-father
Country: Australia
Score: 3.5/5.0
Metal Eclipse Reviews 