Soulrot - Horrors From Beyond

SOULROT - Horrors From Beyond (UNHOLY PROPHECIES - MC 2014)

You know what? For me Chile and death metal is a perfect match. It’s almost like for example good beef and cabernet… or Sasha Grey and cum in her mouth… It’s something what you cannot imagine to go separate ways. And Chile has definitely one of the best scenes, when speaking of the obscure, brutal and sick death metal, played in the old vein. Brilliant. Soulrot is among newer names from that country, “Horrors From Beyond” is actually their first demo, but the guys behind this band are no newcomers, as all of them have played also in other usually unknown bands (actually none of their names is familiar to me)… But damn, I like Soulrot a lot. What’s worth to mention is that “Horrors From Beyond” was released on cassette by Unholy Prophecies. Maybe demo tapes (or tape albums) are not so rare as they were five / ten years ago, as they surely came back to the scene for good, but still, it’s just not so common for every label and every band to release their music on this format. And I just love to see demos on cassette!

Speaking of “Horrors From Beyond”, I must say that when I played the tape for the first time, in the beginning I wasn’t so impressed. I guess it’s due to quite harsh and raw production of this demo (but could it be any other, to be honest? Traditionally the demos were always sounding harsh!), so it took me couple of minutes to get used to this almost rehearsal quality recording. After a while I got used to it and now I have no problem at all with this production; more so, I think it fits to such music perfectly and gives it an extra rotten, horror atmosphere, which is damn cool.

Chile is known that the band from there are in 99% sounding old school, obscure and savage. So does Soulrot. Their old school death metal is reminding me not one particular band or scene, but it’s more like a deadly mixture of all what’s best in the classic death metal; as there are similarities to bands such as Merciless, Nihilist, Massacra, (very early) Asphyx, Autopsy, (very vintage demo era) Vader, Demigod and more! The music is really vicious, brutal, has killer riffs and generates a killer dark, horror aura (Lovecraft inspired another band haha!). It’s really nice stuff, I seriously like what Soulrot did her. More so, they do sound authentic, I don’t find anything what would disturb me… It’s just killer death metal demo, reminding me some other classic demos. Very recommended!

Final rate: 80/100