“Then a new sound droned into our ears, the sound, deep, all-encompassing, with no notes in it, just a gigantic faraway surge of doom-like sound. It was the heavies, coming on with a terrible slowness in flights of twelve, three flights to a group, stretched out across the sky. I thought it would never end……and then the bombs came….” – ‘Straight From the Front’ By Ernie Pyle.

Last year saw plenty of excellent Bolt Thrower /Hail of Bullets worship from the likes of Frozen Soul, Just Before Dawn, Domination Campaign, Deathswarm, Rotpit, and (of course) Memoriam as well as plenty of others I’m sure I missed. Well, here comes the first great one of 2022, with the second album from Sweden’s Creeping Flesh. 

I covered the compilation, In Times of War, from these guys back in 2018, and came away suitably impressed with the no-frills, war-mongering, trundling  (a required word in any Bolt Thrower-inspired review), salvos of mid-paced death metal.  But I missed the 2020 debut album, Into the Meat Grinder (which I have since rectified), but it appears Creeping Flesh are still staunchly delivering top-notch Bolt Thrower worship on album number 2, and have truly honed in on their craft and chosen sound.

The above, WWII newspaper article quote starts the album with a perfect foreboding tone, before the superb, opening riff of “Flaktürme” absolutely destroys everything in its path, per its namesake with one of the more impressive, source material homages I’ve heard, signaling the band’s clear intentions and sound with devastating effect. And from there, it pretty much stays the course for the next 7 songs.

The likes of the steady, stomping of”Finest Hour” (a song about ‘Kaiten’, which were Japanese, ‘manned’ torpedoes), more somber “Like So Many Before Them”, “March of the Elephant”, and absolutely pummeling, favorite, stand out “Decrowned” (which like “Flaktürme”, has another, simply killer Bolt Thrower worshiping lope) all deliver, thick, hefty mid-paced rumbles, with a few blasts thrown in. The vocals are standard,  powerful bellows and the Dennis Eriksson production is beefy, with suitable heft and heave for the subject matter. And every one of them unabashedly imbues the British war masters themselves and cements Creeping Flesh as one of the better, recent Bolt Thrower and Hail of Bullets-influenced old school death metal bands like the one mentioned in the opening paragraph. Good shit.

[Visit the band's website]

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