EP REVIEW: Malicious – Merciless Storm

Finland’s spellbinding Death Metal cult MALICIOUS return with a brand new EP via Invictus Productions. Let us fall victim to its sadistic intentions.

A venomous storm of bestial extremity rips into life with savage riffing and blast-beats. Yawning portals of Necrovore-ian chasmic Death Metal thrashes with inhuman rage while the percussive onslaught is equally unrelenting. Maniacally charged vocals complete the raw and unhinged mix with no less aggression. Those familiar with Malicious will know this band harkens back to the very abyssal and untempered beginnings of Death Metal, rekindling the flame of archaic mastery to smouldering temperatures. In fact few modern acts unleash such hostility to this level of violence (Concrete Winds, Degial, Omegavortex and Hexorcist being a few examples).

Not a second of this EP feels tame, delivering deranged and bewitching craftsmanship at every twisted moment. Conjuring a storm of hellish soundscapes with easy, although brief, “Merciless Storm” is everything it promises to truly obliterate and desecrate all in its pathway of debaucherous chaos. The solos are naturally more or less whammy abuse, while the mental riffing is always charged with a mystical and yet barbaric energy that is truly piercing. This is one of those records where you barely stop to breathe in its eleven minute running time as sheer adrenaline holds you on the precipice of destruction from start to end. None shall be spared, but those who survive will be salivating for more.

Malicious, a name that is not only a promise but a prophecy, gives us true carnage and vitriol in undiluted form. This feral beast of visceral sadism shall not spare any with their mutinously old school approach and unforgiving execution. Perhaps to fearsome for most fans of modern “Death Metal”, but those with the yearning lust for the real thing can feel satisfied by this all-consuming assault of the senses and revel in its violating sonic upheaval of the current weaknesses plaguing the genre.