Oh Spotify, you know me so well. Your algorithms get me. Your daily playlists are the perfect blend of stuff you know that I already like, and stuff you think I might like, but and occasionally throw something in my Daily Mix that makes me instantly buy stuff, case and point, when you played “Awakening of the Realm” from the debut of Russian trio Gosudar.

Meaning ‘prince’ or ‘ruler’ in Cyrillic/Russian, Gosudar is a power trio playing a form of no frills, murky old school, mainly mid-paced death metal that will appeal to fans of Temple of Void, Frozen Soul, Genocide Pact, Goldenpyre, Asphyx, Graceless, Cianide, Incantation and such. It’s not ground breaking or world-changing, just exceptionally rendered death metal.

The guitars have that dirty, muddy 90s/00s Incantation tone, the vocals are from the same realm (and if you can’t tell, the song titles as well), and there some blast beats (i.e. end of “Awakening of the Realm”, “Prophecy Embodiment”) and uptempo gallops (also “Awakening of the Realm”), but for the most part this stays strictly in the realm of rumbling, loping, staggering death metal, with some doom injections, and it’s all excellent as heard on tracks like opener “Demented Visions of the Infinite Power”, “Scripture of the Vile Testimony”, seven-minute, personal farvorite  “Insurrecion of the Nephilim” (with a churning, killer last couple of minutes) ,  and the hefty, six-minute closing title track. And there is zero experimentation, clean vocals (I’m looking at you, Temple of Void), or other tangents, just muddy, murky gnarled riffage from beyond.

With only 6 songs and clocking in at just over 32-minutes, I feel like Gosudar could have offered up a little more on this debut, but like my wife always says, ‘good things come in small packages’, so ill take when I can when its this solid death metal debut from an unknown new player in the scene.

[Visit the band's website]

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