I have been enjoying these horny Danes output since 1st hearing their Devil’s Music back in 2006 and continued following the musical exploits of Helpig, Harm, S and newer bassist Haxen ever since. Theirs is a brand of quite accessible blackness with great melodic precession and lashings of groove that is energetic and suitably in your face. It’s been nearly 6 years since they last delivered an album ‘World Of Tombs’ and back like a blast from the blue I was more than keen to hear what they had fathomed and discovered in the master’s grand design, which is suitably based around the grimmer facets of the nature of the human psyche and mankind’s inevitable destruction.

The 8 songs here are without anything in the way of lean, tearing into the listener with vigour and vim, doing their job and moving onto the next ode of darkness without any unnecessary trimmings. No room for intros or ambient interludes here it is all about the force as the explosive ‘Violent Cosmology’ proves, bristling in with bombastic power and settling down to a leaden beastly malevolence. The vocals from S. are gruff, rough and ready and give this a bit of a black death edge perhaps more than a standard black metal vibe. The punkish power and blasts are quite jaunty and despite the themes this is pretty enjoyable and definitely music you can pogo to in a near delirious form of abandon as the relentless hooks take hold. Thuggish and bold, confrontational in its brutality the 3-minute ‘Apocalyptic Wrath’ is about as perfect a song with that sort of title you could expect. Some spiralling guitar motifs inject veritable lashings of groove and it’s a completely invigorating and compulsive lesson in violence that once encountered won’t let go. Even when they go for the slightly longer songs such as ‘Antagonism Eternal’ there is no let up, the drums hitting like bruises and the blows spurred on from the raw vocal growls and calloused guitar work. Sudden bursts of aggressive speed on this really bring the antagonism to another level but an eerie shimmering guitar line and apocalyptic spoken part midway through at least let you catch your breath for a second before it all explodes again.

Overall the 36-minute album kind of has a steamroller effect on the listener powering over them and flattening out the edges. One slab of mighty, meaty meanness gives way to the next, each with own identity, notable tunefulness and rhythmic thrust, always in your face and hostile. There are at times a slab of coffin closing, wretched doom invading the spaces such on ‘Devouring Armageddon’ and the band prove they can crawl as well as gallop even dishing out some macabre piano work on conclusion before the wrathful ‘Swallowed By The Earth’ explodes and buries you. At times the combination of the bounce and raw vocals give this a near hardcore feel, there’s one sudden section on ‘The Great Death’ where I could almost have been listening to Pro-Pain, not a bad thing in my book at all. By the time the grimoire that is ‘Witchcraft Demonology’ slams shut you will definitely feel pumped up and ready to open this again. Solid stuff all round and if you missed the band before a good starting point to fathom them out for yourself.

(8/10 Pete Woods)

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https://scarletrecords.bandcamp.com/album/to-fathom-the-masters-grand-design