As Drayton Sawyer once said in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, “There's no secret. It's the meat. Don't skimp on the meat. I got a real good eye for prime meat.” In this case, Writhing Shadows does not skimp when crafting brutal and bloodthirsty sounding old school death metal riffs. These Alabama-based death metal musicians deliver a slaughterhouse of vicious tracks on their debut EP, “Flesh Magic of the Haruspex.”
Unlike some of death metal bands that write songs about entrails and unspeakable carnage, Writhing Shadows is able to construct strong compositions that leave an impact on the listener. They do not fall into the gimmicky recycled riff category and the riffs are extremely explosive in terms of delivery, which I would compare to that of bands like Bolt Thrower, Suffocation and Immolation. The four tracks featured on this debut release are extremely unforgiving and convey that old school death metal mentality.
The first song on the release, “Veins of Prophecy,” begins with a deafening blow of unapologetic force and the drummer turns up the aggression by laying down a hellacious rhythm. Everything sounds well produced and the recording quality is rather impressive, especially considering this being the band’s debut EP. From the gruesome guitar riffs to the monstrous sounding vocals, there is a strong cohesive energy that flows throughout the song. On the second track, “Cursed Entrails,” they keep that same musical mindset, while also changing tempo to unleash a slower more doom like composition towards the end of the song.
The last two songs on the EP, “Severed Limbs Reflect” and “Dissected by Fate,” are a couple tormenting pieces of hateful sounding mid-tempo death metal. I thought, “Severed Limbs Reflected,” featured a very sinister yet catchy main riff that complimented the song’s overall theme. On the last track, “Dissected by Fate,” I really enjoyed hearing the slower guitar and bass parts. I thought the bass parts during the song injected some raw low end terror into the mix and really amplified that haunting death doom style.
In the death metal world there are endless bands who write songs about the gory side of the human anatomy, however, I always believe you need to weed out the ones who are not able to write their way out of a body bag. Writhing Shadows proves to be a band that thoughtfully writes and records their tracks, while not taking shortcuts in an attempt to pedal a brutal image. In my opinion, the music comes first because you can have the most horrendous sounding songs titles, but no one will listen if the guitar riffs sound like shit.
Album comes out 8/21/2020 and you can pre-order through Gurgling Gore here:
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