Italy’s brutal bastards, Devangelic return with their third album, Ersetu and their first for Willowtip records after departing from Comatose, who released their prior 2 brutal albums.  Devangelic play no frills brutal death metal.  By now you know what you’re getting into with a Devangelic album.

9 songs in an abrupt 31 minutes, but when death metal is played this brutal, this is the perfect amount of time with the songs averaging a little over 3 minutes a piece.  “Swarm of the Serpents” starts rather quiet with the light guitars before you hear the distortion in the background and then right into a brilliant blast with Paolo laying down a nice high pitch scream and then right into a guttural.  Monster blasting and Devangelic have always reminded me of an early Deicide mixed with early Suffocation.  Regardless the song rips from beginning to end, with a little vocal layering in as well. “Upon the Wrath of Divinities” is up next and more blasting.  Some mid-paced parts with thunderous double bass and the 1.35 has a nice guitar solo, which incorporates some melodies over the blasting and mid-paced moments, while the grunting and growling is going on. The song continues to blast onward until the end.

“Eyes of Abzû” at the 2.36 part has quite the breakdown slam.  At this point I began taking sausage and pepperoni pizzas and throwing them at breakneck speeds across the city.  I made sure the edges were extra sharp so they could decapitate all the people hoarding and buying all the TP and paper towels and cleaning supplies for themselves, while my family and I struggle to find these items-fuck you assholes.  Anyway “Vomiting the Infected” fits quite nicely onto this album, with what’s going on in the world now.  The song has more thunderous double bass, slows down a but and then blast some more.  The 1.39 part meanders into a slower part, then into an old school death thrash beat before the blast.  The 2.04 part is awesome and then with the double tap of the snare drum right into a monster slam slowdown.  I swear to god I was swinging so hard during this part and I wound up falling down a slope of stairs right onto my butt.  This part is crazy good, but then is ripped from us too soon before right into more ferocious blasting madness.

The rest of Ersetu continues the same  Mainly stuck in 1,000 BPM blasting.  Don’t get me wrong I love brutal death metal and the Italian scene, however Devangelic could spread their wings a bit more by having a few slower moments to allow the songs to breathe more and have some more individuality.  Quite often on this a slow moments lasts only a few seconds before going right into the blasting and I wanted more heavier moments where the songs can become a bit more memorable-break some of the monotony up.  When you do that the blasting then has that much more power.  I love my blasting like the next person, but at this point, with a third album, I think Devangelic are pretty set in their ways.

In times like these when the world is going to shit I feel for my brothers and sisters in Italy and all over the world.  Sometimes throwing on 30 minutes of brutal death metal is what is needed to get you through a tough day and Ersetu really does offer up the brutality over and over again.  It’s a good album and the production is crisp and clean.  I would like them to just expand a little more on the songs for future albums, but really, at this time folks support the underground and buy everything Devangelic has to offer to help my paisans out!

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