It is often a band’s first demo tape that gives the clearest indication of what a group will become, and that’s certainly the case with Immortal Death’s first offering. Dark, crusty and nasty, Immortal Death harks back to a time before death metal became cartoonish and cute, rather this release presents the genre as originally intended; it’s the soundtrack of the most depraved horror film you’ve ever seen and as such should really come with some kind of health warming. Originally self released, Immortal Death now gets picked up by Werewolf Records for the global release it so thoroughly deserves.
Hailing from Osaka, Japan and born in 2020, Immortal Death convened at LM Studio and recorded their eponymously-titled demo in a single day (13th July 2022). That’s exactly how death metal should be captured; it shouldn’t be polished to a bright sheen, rather it should be presented warts-’n-all and with the bones poking through the flesh, and that’s exactly what this EP serves up. But first, there’s a spooky introduction (unsurprisingly titled ‘Intro’) to set the scene, and that’s exactly what it does. As if someone has lowered a microphone into the depths of Hades and recorded the cries of the tortured souls therein. It serves as a warning to the curious, a kind of “abandon all hope ye who enter here” type vibe and acts as a portent for the coming storm. That tempest arrives in the shape of ‘Impaled By Horn’. It’s a musical bomb detonated and send shards of razor sharp sonics flying in every direction. The vocals are raw and blistered, the guitars come drenched in feedback and the rhythm section is pummelling, in short it’s everything good death metal should be.
There’s a definite crusty, d-beat, Swedish influence going on here (Anti Cimex, Mob 47) along with the sounds on Venom and Bathory; Immortal Death take them both and fuse them into one awe-inspiring demo. Clocking in at a cool 14-minutes, Immortal Death doesn’t hang around but it doesn’t use two notes when one will suffice and, subsequently, this is death metal in its purest distillation. A powder keg of a release.
- Immortal Death is released via Werewolf Records on 13th September 2024.
Track List:
- Intro
- Impaled By Horn
- Stigmatized
- Death Of The Immortality
- Outro
