Sunday, February 12th, 2023 marks one of the most important rituals in American culture: the release of a new Terminus episode. We're back with some records the more death metal-inclined Terminators will undoubtedly appreciate, plus an appetizer provided by Russia's Utanförskap, a post-black metal project which arrives at a unique sound through a genuine appreciation and understanding of its post-punk and shoegaze source material. Many of you are undoubtedly soured on the post-black style (for good reason,) but trust us: this is the exception to the rule.
First at plate is Deiquisitor, a bashing Danish death metal outfit initially brought to the table by The Black Metal Guy, of all people. Deiquisitor's sound is difficult to pin down, operating in a hazy grey area of oldschool death metal songwriting combined with the cold and nihilistic atonality of the most avant-garde brutal death. "Apotheosis" reaches both forwards and backwards in time, with the primordial matter of Tampa and New York styles of death metal filtered through a prism of terrible, futural certainty.
Following this is the debut record from Apokatastasis, courtesy of our friends at Hessian Firm. This one-man project from Arizona sets itself a challenge right out of the gate: to successfully combine brutal death metal and melodic black metal into a cohesive entity. The result: something akin to a particularly ferocious take on Swedish blackdeath (Dawn, Sacramentum, etc.) infused with the convoluted, ever-spiralling technicality of Crimson Massacre. This one is a challenging listen, certainly, but one that rewards today and promises more in the future.
0:00:00 - Intro/Utanförskap - Förlåtelse (Independent)
0:24:37 - Deiquisitor - Apotheosis (Extremely Rotten Productions)
1:09:31 - Interlude - Nailed - “Rupture Savior” fr. Hatred, Failure & the Extinction of Mankind (Anticulture Records, 2008)
1:13:15 - Apokatastasis - The Consecratory Secretion (Hessian Firm)
1:54:49 - Outro - Vehemence - “By Your Bedside” fr. Helping the World to See (Metal Blade Records, 2004)