American death metal doyens Nunslaughter return in 2021, sadly sans their much missed drummer Jim Sadist who died in late 2015. The band have been involved in over thirty releases of one sort or another since then, but this is their first full-length outing since 2014’s Angelic Dread. He leaves a big hole to fill, of course, but the rest of the band pull together superbly on Red Is The Color… delivering an album that is cohesive and hard-hitting in best Nunslaughter fashion.

If you’ve come into contact with this band before, then you know exactly what to expect – Nunslaughter don’t deal in abrupt left turns or experimentation overmuch… but why would you when you do what you do so well?

The title track sums up Nunslaughter in their 2021 pretty well; With no pun intended, it’s ripping exposition of raw-throated, semi-primitive old school DM, heavy on attitude and making up for what it lacks in finesse and technique with sheer unadulterated bile and brimstone. Eat Your Heart hits hard as well, Don of the Dead belching his hymns of filth with dead-eyed conviction while Tormentor wrenches those signature slightly punky riffs from his axe with demonic glee.

It’s not rocket science, obviously, but Nunslaughter are fully-paid of professors of this sort of stuff nonetheless. They understand that, even in the world of full-on death metal hell, you occasionally need to drop the pace occasionally and grind out a result (as they do on this reviewer’s fave cut Annihilate The Kingdom of God); even in the stygian depths of their world, dynamics matter, and these guys keep things varied enough to keep boredom at bay over the course of the fourteen tracks offered up.

You either love this stuff or you don’t, and there’s nothing here that is going to change your mind whatever of those two camps you happen to belong to. Me? I love it, and it’s great to be able to hear Nunslaughter doing what they do, and doing it so well, over the course of a full-length studio album again. Hail!

Red is the Color of Ripping Death releases on August 27th.