Flaming WrekageTerra Inferna

As Flaming Wrekage’s brutal fourth album tickles your earholes, you know this is something special.

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You know this because first track Witch Hunt storms into command, its bone-sawing proto-melodeath centrepiece riffage latching onto your brain stem scarcely a minute into the track.

You know this because vocalist Dave Lupton intones in harsh rasps, “I’m going through a vicious cycle / I’m on the verge of a downward spiral” – You know that this is a band that wants you to stand up, raise horns, and have every note vibrate through your slowly decaying carcass. (body sounded too normie, soz.) Nightmare Architect taps into the great lead-driven gothic death metal tradition, as if Castlevania leapt from its flat 8-bit existence to hit you square in the jaw. Belter Hell on Earth honest-to-goodness starts with a solid thrash riff panned to the hard left (STEREOPHONIC SOUND!) as double-kicks pummel away on your right. It’s old school, it’s dripping in misty thrash atmosphere and it retreats into a menacing crawl the type Decapitated are known for. The mastery of their instruments are up there at Gojiran or Obscuran levels, yet all that nous is channeled directly into slick, polished songwriting.

There’s only one way to play this record: loud and on repeat.

Nuclear fusions of death and thrash continue apace in tracks like No Gods; Blood and Bone is a centrepiece for wily leads and martial-style stomp and cinematic solos, feeling as if we’re soaring above the grand demonic vista depicted on the cover. Is there any style they can’t nail? Nope: Ghosts cribs as much swampy groove and NOLA weirdness in its three minutes that Phil Anselmo will undoubtedly request an audience.

Each track could be considered its own mini-symphony, seguing between sections seamlessly and creating their own unique and urgent textures and moods. Paralysis catches one off guard since it begins like a standard riffy boi but halts midway to play around with a crunchy, solitary motif; drums and bass nowhere to be heard.  Leadwork explodes like fireworks amid Enduring Decay, culminating in the 80s denim-and-leather throwback Our Own Blood, tremelos a-go-go and quick-time percussion smacking headlong into towering walls of guitar. There’s so many holy shit moments in this record upon first blush, one only wonders how many we’ll pick up during subsequent listens.

Terra Inferna is as much as a celebration of the rich chainmail tapestries metal can weave as it is a testament to their blossoming as an incredible death metal force not to be wreked with. There’s only one way to play this record: loud and on repeat.

STANDOUT TRACKS: Hell On Earth, Blood and Bone, Witch Hunt
STICK THIS NEXT TO: The Black Dahlia Murder, Decapitated, Carnosus