I’ve enjoyed Denmark’s Dawn of Demise for 12 years, 4 albums and 1 EP now, despite absolutely nothing changing in the band’s sound since 2006s Hate Takes its Form, to 2016s The Suffering. Simple, chugging, groovy death metal. However, with the band’s fifth album, an increased sense of melody has upped the ante a little, adding to the band’s simplistic, but brutal arsenal.

Though still armed with a simple mid paced loping death metal lumber, the new melody imbues a sound that lies between country mates  Illdisposed and Dying Fetus. With the focus still on beefy, pit inducing grooves and for lack of a better term, breakdowns, mingled with a few blast beats (i.e “In Silence He’ll Arise”, “The Permanent Cessation”, “Disgusting”) , Dawn of Demise is not reinventing the wheel one bit, but when they latch on to a killer, neck snapping groove, it really hits home as heard on tracks like  the opening title track, “Perversion in the Flesh”, “The Exaltation” and closer “Mark My Words” show.

And now with just a smidge more melody, tracks like “This Hate Will Consume You”, “Collapse” or “The Exaltation” border on melodic death metal, just with the attitude and heft of a 500lb gorilla. The grooves littered through every track are just monstrous, controlled assaults of carpet bombing, pummeling death metal goodness, particularly in my favorite tracks “Enraged” and utterly punishing penultimate track, “A Belated Abortion”. So if you are looking for that sweep filled, tech overload, just skip this and go for an Obscura album or Equipoise’s recent album. Because here, even with some melody , the three minute slabs of beef will not satisfy anyone looking for anything more than a simple, 38 minute beatdown.

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