45. Venom Prison - "Erebos"

The return of probably the finest death metal band this country currently has to offer. Venom Prison had taken hardcore’s no-nonsense and fiercely political ideologies and transferred those over to Death Metal. They hold no truck with the gore-obsessed patriarchy that has ruled over the genre for decades and instead they use its carnal intensity to make great sweeping statements about the ills and injustices they see all around them. This is Death Metal reinvented as protest music, full of bile, anger, and utter insurrection.

“Erebos” highlights a band much more confident in their identity, their politics and their musical abilities. There is more space in this this record, they seem to have decided that in order to make a point they don’t need to stuff every song full of as many malicious riffs as possible. Instead, minimalism is the key and “Erebos “ is at its most evocative when those buzzsaw guitars are allowed space to breathe. 

It is heavy, it is crushing, and it wears its heart very much on its sleeve. It tears away from Death Metal every trace of the toxic masculinity that has haunted it for nearly four decades and what we are left with is an incredibly powerful musical force full of pathos, passion, and righteous anger.