ALBUM REVIEW: Diocletian – Inexorable Nexus

New Zealand’s DIOCLETIAN are famously one of the strongest purveyors of bestial Black / Death Metal. Their new album is out now digitally via Nuclear War Now Productions with physical formats following soon.

Dominant guitars and scathing vocals draw in a potent furore of bestial might. Their bludgeoning percussion and sonic maelstrom of unholy Extreme Metal kicks right into overdrive with their most hostile and unwieldy musical belligerence. Dive-bombing solos complete that old school feeling while the raw but balanced mix gives all elements of the record space to coexistence in salivating savagery. The more mid-tempo ritualistic abuse allows the crushing bass tons to cut through those sawtooth guitars and punish our skulls with more annihilation of the sonic spectrum. Their prior album “Amongst The Flames Of A Bvrning God” got mixed reviews, personally I really dug it, but here we can hear a return to records like “Doom Cult” in many of the more diabolically Death Metal ideas coming through while their blackened flame is as animalistically hungry as ever. The opening moments of this ferocious album are as viscerally demonic as I had hoped for.

Taking those grinding assaults and catastrophically heavy grooves to concoct a brutal and menacing soundscape with that raw, feverishly unholy atmosphere; Diocletian seems to have found inspiration and strength to deliver a truly punishing listen. The triptych “Heathen Siege” shows the band retains their ability to craft a more expansive piece while keeping that malicious energy broiling with malignant energy. Whereas other more immediate songs in its wake splinter whatever bone matter is left over and pulverise it. This record feels mature and yet always clings onto that lust for carnage that a band such as Diocletian needs at the heart of every manoeuvre. Blitzkrieg tactics, tension, song craft; it’s all here in plentiful abundance to give us a really bewitching listen in all of its vicious virulence. Maligning and scoring with every breath, the spew of vocals rides waves of granite-like riffing and tornados of percussive torment. Growing in strength, your breath will be bated for the corrosive destruction that consistently rains upon you.

Until its final moments this record showcases Diocletian’s ability to violently construct some of the most intense and rabid music imaginable while the sense of structure and precision is without fault. Raw, chaotic and yet perfectly driven, this besieging of all things holy is pure blasphemous ecstasy. Trepanning us at every second with relentless musical magma, it is a pleasure to be subject to the sadistic executions of sound that take place on every single track. Consistently crushing, no respite is had on this experience but the sheer adrenaline will have you returning for more barbaric warfare. The rancor from every band member is palpable as the record develops to its obliterating climax. This is only exacerbated by the presence of Ryan Forster (Conqueror / Death Worship) and Caller Of The Storms (Blasphemy). Withstand its vibrant onslaught and you shall return for more. Or perhaps you shall simply fall to the blade of Diocletian…

Pure War Metal majesty. This new offering is a mighty and stoic slice of bold Black / Death Metal superiority. No room for weakness, no room for faltering, only militantly maniacal desecration. Diocletian prove their consistence as one of the best bands in this corner of music by reigning over all imitators with a hammer of iron and a spew of hellfire. “Inexorable Nexus” is an immovable record which dominates all in their path. Love or hate them, Diocletian take no prisoners and fire no warning shots. Twenty years and five albums into their career and they show no sign of mercy or compromise.