MEMORIAM

Requiem For Mankind

NUCLEAR BLAST

A gleeful but grim opus memorandi from death metal veterans

scarcity of 21st-century Bolt Thrower and Benediction material, Memoriam’s fruitful album-a-year output since they emerged in 2017 has and were both worthy of their members’ more lauded past efforts. It’s unsurprising, then, that is more of the same but better again, building on the strengths of Andy Whale’s understated but rigorous drumming, Karl Willetts’ unmistakable bellowing roar and Scott Fairfax’s potent six-string summoning, wielding monstrous death metal hooks that slam into the cranium and gut with even more shattering results. Opener ’s thrashing drive that calls to mind bassist Frank Healy’s tenure in Cerebral Fix is as fast as proceedings get, with the album reaching its nadir on the doom-laden tracks and s mournful atmosphere, as tar-thick and steel-enforced as we’ve come to expect. Willetts indulges his trademark stories from the battlefield on and the thunderous , while the title track and turn his coherent but caustic vocals to the unmitigated catastrophe of these ever-worsening times. oozes with acerbic filth that works best with Russ Russell’s raw production, which still helps the regal peaks of climb to a riveting pinnacle. Other death metal bands may be taking the genre into ever more complicated and terrifying realms but the years of graft under Memoriam’s collective belts ensures their raison d’être is still devastatingly effective, and pulled off with such enthusiasm that is as gleefully riveting as it is a depressing indictment of the world into which it’s been spewed.