Emerging eight years ago, Venom Prison embodies, along with Employed To Serve, the revival of English death metal, but not only. If it may seem paradoxical, if not surprising, that this new blood comes from bands led by a female singer, it is to forget that the male gender no longer has a monopoly on brutality.
Three albums, "Animus", "Samsara" and "Primeval", released between 2016 and 2020, have based the growing fame of these Welshmen that Century Media has just stolen from Prosthetic Records, furious American label where they were however as at home. Let's bet that the German stable will certainly allow them to reach a wider audience than the one they've captured so far, rather limited to metalcore or even grind. Many people will discover them with "Erebos". What better than this fourth effort for that?
In about fifty minutes, it ideally exposes the signature of the English, a remarkable balance between ferocity and melody. Against all expectations, the first one is embodied by Larissa Stupar, whose belches make the growls of Angela Gossow (Arch Enemy) look like pleasant cooing ('Gorgon Sisters'). The second one flows from these guitars generally fed with heavy metal in the great and beautiful Swedish tradition of In Flames and others At The Gates. It is enough to take in your face a missile like 'Veil Of Night' to understand this ambivalent personality, raging and luminous, of a threatening darkness combined with atmospheres nevertheless bewitching.
In fact, all along, torn between harshness and clarity, "Erebos" brings as much pleasure as nausea, uncomfortable perception that reinforces the extreme density of the menu. The implacable technical skill of the musicians, who are not frightened by the complex structures, makes this aggression even more severe and exhausting.
But when the salvific 'Pain Of Oizys' comes out, with a painful emotion, which illustrates that Larissa masters as much the clear vocals as the rutting beast's vociferations, we can only be struck by this beauty as desperate as unexpected, underlined by guitars and delicate arrangements. Positioned halfway through the album, this song offers a breath of fresh air, which its authors can't help but darken surreptitiously, before the complete dismemberment that continues on 'Golden Apples Of The Hesperides' and its successors. If its rarity gives it all its value, all its strength, it remains that this (falsely) tempered register suits perfectly the English who would be inspired to cultivate it more. But emptied of its brutal rage, Venom Poison would not be what it is...
Nevertheless, "Erebos" ideally opens a door on this extremely talented band whose bituminous pugnacity is entangled, within a technically convoluted whole, with surprising melodic cysts.