The harvest begins again for Bodyfarm.
Barely a year after their fifth album, the band made up of Bram Hilhorst (guitar), Alex Seegers (guitar), Ralph de Boer (bass/vocals) and David Schermann (drums, Weltschmerz, Wrang, ex-Wesenwille, live for Helleruin…) celebrate their fifteenth anniversary with their new EP, Malicious Ecstasy, released by Edged Circle Productions.
We start with the solid Retaliate, whose motto is « show no mercy », and which shows us this time and again with their solid riffs adorned with savage howls, with the only semblance of release coming from their unifying choruses. The bloody leads also respect the instructions, adding a sharp touch to the thick basis, but they become slightly more melodic on Pervitin, still creating a rather unhealthy atmosphere with the furious Old School roots of the composition. The band immediately segues into Onward Doomsday, adding a fix of vindictive Thrash with towering guitars while the vocalist pours out all his rage, creating a catchy jerky approach that contrasts with the majestic slowness of Gates of Malignancy, which remains just as violent, but with a much colder, darker and sometimes even melancholic atmosphere, especially during the final harmonics.
The second part of the EP consists of five live tracks recorded at Kammienai2 in Krakow, Poland, during their 2023 tour. Having seen the band in Paris, I knew more or less what to expect, but the tracks remind me just how devastating their set had been, with a well-chosen sequence of catchy riffs proving one thing: Death Metal still has a bright future ahead of it!
Bodyfarm is one of what I consider to be a safe bet on the greasy Old School Death scene. Even if Malicious Ecstasy only brings four new compositions, they’re all just as dangerous as the others, and just waiting to break necks live.
95/100