Revel In Flesh |Flesh For The Kult Of Death |War Anthem Records

Revel In Flesh came together in Bavaria in 2011 around vocalist Ralf Hauber, and from the debut "Deathevokation" onward the band has devoted itself to the Stockholm gospel, HM-2 saturation, graveyard melody and zero interest in modernity. "Manifested Darkness" and "Death Kult Legions" cemented that reputation across the mid 2010s, followed by "Emissary Of All Plagues" and "The Hour Of The Avenger", a run of albums that kept the German scene tethered to the old Swedish way while most of their countrymen chased something else.

The current line up puts Hauber alongside Jonny Pettersson on guitar and bass, a man whose work with Wombbath and Just Before Dawn makes him close to a specialist in this exact sound, with Simon Abele on second guitar and Erik Barthold behind the drums. Fifteen years in, the band's ninth full length lands on War Anthem Records.

Eleven tracks, close to forty eight minutes, and every one of them is soaked in that downtuned buzz the Swedes patented in 1990. The guitars of Pettersson and Abele are rotten and saturated, the riffs built on tremolo runs that fall into slow doom laden stomps, and Barthold plays it blunt and old school, D-Beats and mid paced hammering with no interest in showing off. Hauber growls low and phlegmy, more articulate than most, and he pushes the choruses of "Bodybag Inferno" and "Death Kult Maniacs" hard enough that they stick after one listen.

The morbid lead melodies in "The Graverobber" and "Tombstalker" are the darkest material here, mournful and cold over a rhythm section that sounds like it was buried and dug up again. Lyrically the album stays underground, death cults, corpses, decay, nothing dressed up, and Juanjo Castellano Rosado's artwork mirrors that ugliness. The production is warm and analog leaning, bass audible under the guitar wall, drums natural, nothing scrubbed into sterility.

For anyone who keeps "Left Hand Path" and "Like An Ever Flowing Stream" in permanent rotation, this is a proper meal. Hauber has been doing this since 2011 without once softening the formula, and the band sounds more savage here than most acts half their age. Death metal for people who want it dark, melodic in the old Swedish sense, and free of anything that’s compromising.

|8.3