You can rely on Indian label Transcending Obscurity to churn out the good stuff on a regular basis, but they’ve really outdone themselves in my opinion with I, Moloch, the new album from Turkish noise terrorists Shrine of Denial.

These exciting newcomers lay down their death metal assault fast, thick n’sludgy, but with enough twists and turns to keep things interesting. Their song arrangements are great, keeping the listener on their toes at all times, and on the best tracks – which for me are opener Climbing Through Nothingness and the insanely heavy Headless Idol – they come across as real contenders.

Key to this is the performance of drummer Berk Köktürk, whose consistently titanic performances throughout lift the band to another level. I’m not going to make any grand claims on the man’s behalf here, but I will say that I haven’t heard such a consistently impressive performance from an ‘unknown’ drummer in a long, long time.

Eray Nabi puts in a strong shift behind the mic too, keeping up near-inhuman levels of aggression and rage throughout. But he’s got one of those death metal voices that somehow exudes a little bit of soul; this isn’t common or garden dodsmetal bawling by any stretch of the imagination.

Bassist Ahmet Ünveren locks in unobtrusively with Köktürk, providing a remarkably solid bedrock given the amount of Dervish activity going on behind the kit. This provides Denizkaan Aracı and Onur Uslu the perfect springboard from which to launch wave after wave of six string savagings, which of course they do with alacrity.

It’s pretty difficult, at this stage in the game, to keep things interesting across a whole death metal album, but Shrine of Denial definitely pull that trick off on I, Moloch. A bright new star has emerged in the murky death metal firmament!

 

I, Moloch releases on March 7th.