While many “serious” music fans can be dismissive of compilation albums, I’m a big fan of such releases, especially the more unusual sort which collect rare or unreleased tracks. That’s why I was happy to learn that there was a new Frightful release dropping so soon after their last studio album (reviewed here). Collecting seven tracks from three demos, Born After Astral Rites works on several levels; not only does it offer an overview of the band’s development between 2017 to 2019, but it also offers a glimpse into the band’s inner workings and what makes this bunch so bone crushingly heavy.
Formed in Gdańsk, Pomerania, in 2016, Frightful soon hit the studio and recorded the Born After Burial demo the following year. The three track presented here evidence a band in their infancy, wearing their influences on their sleeves to deliver a bloodsoaked brand of death metal. Opening track ‘She’s So Cute When She’s Dead’ is raw and brutal (as the title would suggest), yet it also has a technical edge which would signpost their later career. Frightful are the perfect mixture of cerebral and visceral and ‘Born After Burial’ is a perfect example of the latter; tearing from speaker to speaker like a buffalo stampede, it’s a turbo-boosted brand of death metal that’s powered by thrash metal fuel; the two genres fusing to create a song that sent fireworks in all directions.
Released in 2018 the Cannibalistic Rites demo found Frightful getting low down and dirty, down tuning their instruments which found the band widening their musical palette, introducing a devilishly good dirge on ‘Raped On The Ritual’ before unleashing the (Hell’s) hounds on the ballistic title-track, a cut that careens like a runaway locomotive. Dropping in November 2019, the Astral Freeze demo was another bombastic blast of thrash-infused death metal. For some reason ‘Angel Waste’ is omitted, but we do get the caustic title-track, along with Dissection cover ‘Son Of The Mourning’.
Since these tracks were recorded, Frightful have expanded to a quartet with Eryk Jakubczyk joining on second guitar in 2023, so this collection can be seen as the closing of one chapter and the starting of another. Yet, whatever the reason for release, Born After Astral Rites celebrates a band in their prime.
- Born After Astral Rites is released via Godz Ov War Productions and is available now (from here).
Track List:
- She’s Cute When She’s Dead *
- Born After Burial *
- A Morning With Victim *
- Raped On The Ritual **
- Cannibalistic Rites **
- Astral Freeze ***
- Son Of The Mourning ***
* From Born After Burial demo, 2017
** From Cannibalistic Rites demo, 2018
*** From Astral Freeze demo, 2019
