Azarath - In Extremis

By Bryan Camphire. Spending time with a work of art, such that you become intimately acquainted with it, can sometimes turn into an obligation. You become compelled to tell people about it. For me, In Extremis by Azarath is just such a record.

By Bryan Camphire.

Artwork by Marta Promińska (Hypnagogic Painting).

Spending time with a work of art, such that you become intimately acquainted with it, can sometimes turn into an obligation. You become compelled to tell people about it. For me, In Extremis by Azarath is just such a record. I need to tell you why, over time, this is becoming one of my favorite death metal records of this year.

On the surface, the record might seem ordinary at a first listen. Azarath are not trying to reinvent the wheel. This music seems to exist outside of trends. Nothing is done to obfuscate their metal through atmosphere. Studio trickery is not an issue here. There is very little ornamentation: the songs are evil in and of itself. They play this stuff live as is. It’s living breathing death.

However, a casual listen to In Extremis might feel cheapened when you are told that the drummer plays in Behemoth. But make no mistake, Azarath does not play second fiddle to their gigantically more popular sibling. Rest assured, you are unlikely to see this band playing at an arena named after a car company. Azarath is uncompromising. Delivering on the promise of this album title, their breed of death metal is truly extreme.

The record is ferocious from front to back, and yet, the amount of nuance on display is enough to keep a listener guessing. The threat this record presents is both in your face and hidden in plain sight, like a deadly serpent you expect will poison you but ends up crushing you to death instead. The menace they create is as immediate as it is crafty and sinister.

Azarath take something as seemingly innocuous as tempo and turn it into a weapon. The drums push. The guitars pull. They almost sound like they are playing two slightly different tempos simultaneously. This is how they create nerve-wracking tension and maintain it throughout the entirety of In Extremis. These Polish death metal stalwarts have been at it for the better part of two decades, and their sophisticated approach to songcraft is on full display on this record.

The finer points of In Extremis revealed themselves to me with repeated listens over the course of several months as Azarath kept me coming back for more. Up-tempo death metal can often seem by-the-numbers; over all such records can sound overly polished and scrubbed squeaky-clean. By contrast, Azarath fight dirty. In extremis is a kick to the nether regions of metal delivered with steel-toed boots. It’s dizzying and it floors you.

Label Spotlight: Witching Hour Productions

Polish label Witching Hour Productions have now set up shop on Bandcamp. Their bread and butter is Polish death metal of recent vintage (but die-hard fans of Behemoth and Vadar can find releases of early demos and albums). Of course when it comes to death metal who better to separate the wheat from the chaff than the mighty Autothrall?

Polish label Witching Hour Productions have now set up shop on Bandcamp. Their bread and butter is Polish death metal of recent vintage (but die-hard fans of Behemoth and Vadar can find releases of early demos and albums). Of course when it comes to death metal who better to separate the wheat from the chaff than the mighty Autothrall? So without further ado: enjoy his excavation of three massive chunks of death metals from the bowels of the Witching Hour Bandcamp.

Cover art by Zbigniew Bielak

Try and envision a world in which Deicide wrote much better music than they normally do, and incorporated Polish strength blasting and a bit more flashy, thrashing aggression in addition to splitting the layered vocals down to just growls and snarls (and usually not at the same time). This is a world Azarath not only have envisioned, but have manifest into reality for 13 years and five full-lengths, the latest of which is Blasphemers' Maledictions, a brutal execution of dead center production values and rampant, neck snapping anger which leaves but the chalk outlines of corpses in its wake. This would be enough as is, for most folks, and yet they've also seen fit to pen riffs that are actually worth a damn. (read the rest of the review here).

Artwork by Michał "Xaay" Loranc

"White Architect" builds a nice intro atmosphere that instantly gives you hope that you're about to hear more than the average death record, and "Cortex Defamation" cashes in the check, with tyrannical walls of thick bludgeoning rhythms that instantly get the anger level high and the blood flowing through the limbs that then flail about like an induced seizure. Yet, amidst the crawling, battering of the guitars there are nice little touches of distorted backup vocals, and the leads after 3:00 are fantastic. "A Dying World" charges gloriously across some broiling guitar melodies and spastic bass fills before breaking down into a thick series of shifting, crunchy tempos, and "War Machine" is simply a ridiculous, fucking brutal piece which removed at least three of my vertebrae as I was listening and unable to stop from jerking around the booth, flighty arpeggios complementing Chudy's blunt chorus vocals. And from this point...it just gets SICKER. (read the rest of the review here).

Cover art by Mentalporn

Next to Vader's Necropolis (which is a lot more barebones than this album), it's the best Polish death of 2009, easily obliterating the latest Behemoth for that honor. "Revival" opens with a lush cosmic ambience, with a throbbing bass that helps emotionally ascend into a destructive arsenal of storming riffs as the heavens tear asunder. This album is like the Galactus of death metal. Jacek Grecki has a voice very similar to Piotr of Vader, if a little blunter in places. You'll probably want a breather after this first track, but the intimidating "Personal Universe" will not allow such folly, as it bludgeons you into oblivion like a fleet of Star Destroyers en route to a real conflict. "...if the Dead Can Speak" begins with some timid, flowing guitars, elevating with some breakneck chugging, grooves and double bass madness, before the vocals take command over a simple, rolling pattern. "216" then again annihilates the listener into formless space dust. Get used to it, because it's going to happen again with "One Step Too Far", "Divine Project" and the tribally taunting "Simulation". (read the rest of the review here).