Fuck yes. This is exactly the kind of death metal I needed today!
Hell Trepanner come from Lima, Peru and apparently have no interest whatsoever in sounding modern. Good. The Consecration of Eternal Impurity is their debut full-length and it spends the entire runtime stomping through old-school death metal territory without a single apology.
The first thing that stood out to me was the guitar sound. It’s filthy. Not in that overproduced “let’s recreate Sweden in a studio” way, either. It just sounds nasty. Big riffs, ugly leads, loads of HM-2 buzz and enough groove to keep your neck busy for most of the album.
I kept coming back to tracks like “Profane Sacramentum” and “Rain of Impaled Skulls”. Not because they’re radically different from the rest of the record, but because they nail exactly what this band does best. Slow sections that feel like getting buried under concrete, then suddenly everything speeds up and starts throwing punches again.
One thing I appreciated is that the album never feels desperate. You know how some bands spend half the record trying to convince you how brutal they are? Hell Trepanner don’t seem interested in that. They just get on with it.
The production is rough enough to keep the atmosphere intact but clear enough that the riffs don’t turn into mush. That’s all I really need from a record like this.
No, they’re not reinventing death metal. They’ve probably got no interest in reinventing death metal. Honestly, I’d have been disappointed if they tried.
If you miss the days when death metal sounded dangerous, ugly and slightly unhinged, give this one a listen!
https://www.facebook.com/HellTrepannerDeath/
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