Martyrvore - Obliteration

MARTYRVORE - Obliteration (DEATHRUNE - CD 2014)

Years have passed since I heard anything from Matei from Death to Mankind / Die Todesrune (now Deathrune Records). But he contacted me a while ago introducing to his newest release, which is a CD of American band called Martyrvore. I don’t know any of this band’s previous releases, which were some demos and splits, but that doesn’t even matter so much. It’s good that I got a chance to listen to “Obliteration”, as it is really damn awesome and shredding piece of obscurity and bestiality!

This band really shows how violent, bestial, cruel, evil and sinister this music can be. Martyrvore performs death / black metal, which I think brings some strong resemblances to such bands like Archgoat, Black Witchery, Profanatica, Throneum, Nunslaughter, Bestial Raids, Blasphemy, Incantation, Teitanblood and many other, similar cult acts. More so, the atmosphere on “Obliteration” reminds me the evil, satanic feeling on the Acheron albums. So, put together all these bands I mentioned, imagine simple, not complicated, maybe even quite archaic music, but with very heavy, thick sound and riffing and with awesome ghoulish vocals – and then you will know what is Martyrvore like. 

There are 19 tracks on the album! Of corpse some of them are intros, but only few, and the rest is an uncompromising and malevolent attack of bestial death / black metal anthems, mostly played in fast, vicious tempos – short, but straight forward and merciless to the bone! But with the production, which is harsh, but clean and deadly powerful this music really crushes and sets the proper atmosphere right from the very beginning, from the first riff of “Tsunami II”. Yes, total annihilation! Simple means, not primitive, but just traditional for this sort of music and the result is great. Martyrvore knows perfectly how to compose this music to achieve the best, most powerful results and in my opinion they succeeded on “Obliteration”. For me the most important in this music is to set the proper evil atmosphere and to have the powerful (nuclear hehe!) sound – and in both Martyrvore did great. There’s no philosophy in this music, no mathematic formulas… some songs may sound too alike to each other, but I don’t even care so much, what matters is that energy and blood, which erupts from the speakers once I play “Obliteration” loud. Get this offering of disgust and blasphemy and support Martyrvore. Well good stuff, indeed! And great front artwork!

Standout tracks: “Tsunami II”, “Iron Satan”, “Nuclear Orgasm”, “Reaper”

Final rate: 70/100