Album number two from these, grimy, filthy purveyors of Celtic Frost meets Sabbath, meets Slayer, meets Cyanide wrought noise, and everything seems to be upped; the artwork is spectacular, the riffs are sludgier, the bottom end is heavier and the density is more oppressive.

A few good crusty records have passed my desk of late; The Abominable Iron Sloth, Ultralord and Black Cobra, but LOTM is the gnarliest and most developed of the bunch thanks to an even more fluid sense of song writing that relies on more than just teeth rattling production. The aptly named The Ultimate Destroyer clambers to the top of the crusty heap. The three piece, comprising of Steven Rathbone and Donald James (ex-7000 Dying Rats) and Pelican drummer Larry Herweg, still orates about all things Mythological and ancient (‘Behead the Gorgon’, ‘The Hydra Coils Upon This Wicked Mountain’) and deliver punishing riffage at a moderate pace, but things seem more fine tuned this time around.

Though just as primal as Carnage, The Ultimate Destroyer has just a bit more polish and overall song clarity (i.e shorter, more direct) rather than a 40 minute bludgeoning. Fear not though, The Ultimate Destroyer is still a blisteringly heavy, toe curling and dense record, but has some churning refinement amid the torrents of crust.

‘Juggernaut of Metal’ appropriately starts thing of with a tumbling, seething landslide of riffage, but the monstrous start of ‘Behead the Gorgon’ is the albums first real butt puckering moment before it escalates into a pure old school basting. The rollicking title track segues nicely into the ooze fest that is ‘Horror’ (boy, LOTM certainly know how to appropriately name songs….), then the almost classic Entombed rumble of ‘Grisly Hound of the Pit’. The torturously heavy ‘Cannibal Massacre’ (reduced from the EP version), features Travis Ryan of Cattle Decapitation adding inhuman roars to the already mercilessly heavy offering.

The only real negative of the album is the minute long thrash burst of ‘Lord of Butchery’, but that’s washed away by the last two monolithic tracks, the nasty ‘Engorged With Unborn Gore’ and the utterly massive closer ‘The Hydra Coils Upon This Wicked Mountain’.

If LOTM’s debut did indeed leave Carnage in its wake, then this follow up Ultimately Destroys

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