Brutal death metal and sci-fi combine once again with the latest effort from Horde Casket. Their effort from 2017, entitled “Xenopocalypse”, attempts to use rough production, brutal music, and intense vocals in order to impress fans of the brutal death genre. Spoiler alert, they succeed. “Earth Will Bleed” is the intro to this, and is the usual sci-fi intro of machinery noise, with someone talking over it. This leads directly into “The Plague of Humanity”, which begins very brutally, and really does a good job setting up the style of this release. “Shape-Shifters” continues this, while showing off some awesome guitar work, and nice vocal range. The intensity is continued on “Uprising”, which continues the awesome guitar work, and features a solo which is pretty damn awesome. The interlude for this album, “Behind You”, is soft, and leads directly into “Blood-Scorched Earth”, which continues the brutality seen on the first half of this release, and the solo on this track is definitely top notch.
“Dissection” is next, and damn, this track is brutal. This is probably the best song of the album in my opinion, and takes no prisoners. “Planetary Obliteration” follows this up with another fast paced, guitar driven song, before launching into “The Ritual”. This song is very chuggy, and compared to the rest of the album is slower, but just as heavy. “The Beyond” is the last song before the outro, and is a bit different. First, this song feels darker than the rest, and about halfway through, a melodic lead guitar takes over, before ending on total brutality. “Nothingness” is the outro, and is honestly a pretty weak ending to the album. This is good. Besides the outro, and the production, which while good for this style, does leave something to be desired, this is a solid album. Any and all fans of death metal shouldn’t sleep on this one, and if you’re a fan of brutal death metal, there’s no reason for you not to check this out
Overall Score: 8.5/10
Review by Sam Hookom
