Ravenous Death is back with its second album.
Created in 2016 in Mexico, the band composed of Víctor Mercado (vocals, A Dying Season, Demonic Manifestation), Enrique Fray (guitar, A Dying Season, Demonic Manifestation, Macabre Goat), Esteban Salcedo (drums, Demonic Manifestation, Macabre Goat) and Alejandro Méndez (bass, Remains, ex-Grotesque Deity) introduce us to Visions from the Netherworld.
With their name inspired by a Vomitory track, the band can only play Death Metal, and Trail of Horrors, the introductive track, will show us. After faraway noises over a sample, ghoulish howlings and morbid riffs team up to create a hooking aggressiveness between greasy Old School tones and heady leads. The sound comes back to violence, then Caverns of Freezing Torture comes next with the same raw strength, creating an unfurling and heady wave, just like on Plethora of Blood, a composition on which bass plays an important role. The band’s rage is totally unleashed, but it sometimes let place to more worrying and dark parts, while Kingdom of Æternal Flames will stay anchored into this continuous violence. Leads are not aside, and the basis of pure aggressiveness help them to consciously lacerate us while letting Gore Vault Dismemberment trap us into this cage of frightening blackness. The song regularly picks into Brutal Death as well as Swedish roots for its devastating leads, while Hydra Dungeon initiates a weighing ambience before placing its suffocating rhythmic. Once again, heady harmonics play a lot in this putrid veil, then Path of the Spawn Dogs continues with the same elements, and still this will to crush us. The blast steamroller drives us to Burnt Children of Moloch and its soft Thrash influences which will give an additional pulse of unhealthy energy before burying us under this ghostly solo, then Serpents of Wretchedness offer us a dark break. But the violence of Death Metal riffs quickly comes back, creating a dark and oppressive tornado which sometimes borrows from Black Metal roots. The band also offers haunting tones with Portals to Non-Existence and its introductive slowness, but we feel riffs crave for blood, and that they are waiting for the moment to explode, just like on the hypnotic The Ascending Chasm and its mystical leads. The band alternates the weighing elements and fast riffs over this last composition which closes the album with an especially melodic.
When we talk about Death Metal, Ravenous Death is clearly not the last one to speak. With Visions from the Netherworld, the band develops as much raw strength, blackness and haunting leads as Old School craftsmanship.
90/100