Pathetic "The Pestilence Born of Unclean Acts"

    Last month Pathetic released a hellacious concept album called, “Cleansing the Land of the Infidel,” and are now back with another insidious sounding extreme metal assault. Their new album, “The Pestilence Born of Unclean Acts,” takes listeners on an even more raw and primitive old school death journey into the nefarious minds of these Canadian extreme metal practitioners. 

    I was really impressed with, “Cleansing the Land of the Infidel,” because they built the entire album around the fall of the Ottoman Empire and composed some devastating tracks to compliment the album’s overall theme. Now some people might not be as into a historical themed death metal album as myself, but I think that musically there is no denying the band’s ability to write vivid cuts of old school sounding brutality. “The Pestilence Born of Unclean Acts,” definitely conveys a more straightforward style of old school sounding death metal and places an emphasis on unapologetic sounding tracks that do not waste an opportunity to send a cataclysmic shockwave across the metal community. 

    The album’s opening, “The Pestilence Born of Unclean Acts,” is a ruthless burst of vile sounding old school aggression. Guitarist Spencer Kraft unleashes a flurry of agonizing riffs and blistering lead guitar parts. Although he does not constantly showoff how fast he can move up and down the fretboard by doing pointless sweeps, Spencer has an aptitude for laying down some wicked sounding solos that compliment the chaotic landscape. Bassist Aj Kovar and drummer Duncan Chisholm also prove to be a formidable force when pertaining to their musicianship as well as their vocal contributions. The contrasting death growl styles from both musicians really stands out and gives this entire release an even more sinister element. 

    Songs like “Ashen Ascent,” “Traitors Harvest” and “Witchcraft Commandos” are all great examples of gruesome sounding death metal songs that definitely leave an impact on the listener. Pathetic has demonstrated with their last few releases that they do not mess around when constructing corpse ripping compositions. The band’s fiendish passion for extreme music is what really separates them from most of your current generic death metal worship bands. 

    The last two songs off of the release, “Abducted (Highway of Tears)” and “Darkness and Desolation," are just as destructive and brutal as the previous tracks. I personally really enjoyed, “Darkness and Desolation,” which begins with a very cold sounding atmosphere and haunting riff composition. The song also happens to be the longest song featured on the album, so you hear the band expanding their creative approach by coming up with some devastating dynamic arrangements. 

    In the end, Pathetic offers the underground metal community another barbaric assault of pure bone grinding death metal. I have covered this band for over a year now and I believe that they are moving in the right direction in terms of crafting monumental sounding death metal music. Hell, if they started incorporating smooth jazz into their music and dubstep, I probably would stop writing reviews for them. Luckily that is not the case with these guys, because Pathetic captures the true malevolent spirit of death metal that shall hopefully drive an axe into the skulls of all those garbage sounding experimental jazz dubstep hipster metal bands.  

Check out the entire release below:

https://pathetic666.bandcamp.com/

Also, here is a link to my review of “Cleansing the Land of the Infidel” as well as an interview with bassist/singer AJ Kovar :

https://rockandmetaltemple.blogspot.com/2020/08/pathetic-cleansing-land-of-infidel.html

https://rockandmetaltemple.blogspot.com/2020/08/interview-with-aj-kovar-patheticwitches.html