UK death metal act Venom Prison flipped the script on the genre's often misogynistic views with their debut album Animus, writing lyrics like "Your kind deserves decimation, castration, genital mutilation, perpetrator elimination," on "Perpetrator Emasculation," and their latest release is no less challenging. The band's sophomore album, Samsara, is yet another fantastic piece of anti-misogynistic death metal built to shut down the casual violent rape fantasies often found in metal.
Vocalist Larissa Stupar's lyrics are just as vile and disgusting as her vocals, which have improved since Venom Prison's debut record. Lines such as "a fight for survival, the maternal cells in a fierce combat against the invading trophoderm, genetic diversity means deadly rivalry, to sate the thirst for nutrients" on "Matriphagy" paint a horrid picture of a mother being consumed by her offspring, while other tracks are equally grotesque.
The music itself falls somewhere between straight-forward death metal and hardcore, but doesn't fall into the laziness many deathcore acts bludgeon listeners with. Breakdowns on songs such as "Uterine Industrialisation" or "Self Inflicted Violence" are pummelling and crafted with care, instead of simply chugging away to fill time. The band do an exemplary job of intertwining technical shred with simple grooves and beatdowns, and even include an unnerving industrial song ("Deva's Enemy") to break up the album.
While none of Samsara is necessarily bad, there are moments where tracks start to blend together and lose focus. This doesn't necessarily take away from the amazing moments of the album, but as a whole it could use a bit more variance. That being said, the record makes it clear that Venom Prison are destined to join the top of the new-school death metal pack.
(Prosthetic)Vocalist Larissa Stupar's lyrics are just as vile and disgusting as her vocals, which have improved since Venom Prison's debut record. Lines such as "a fight for survival, the maternal cells in a fierce combat against the invading trophoderm, genetic diversity means deadly rivalry, to sate the thirst for nutrients" on "Matriphagy" paint a horrid picture of a mother being consumed by her offspring, while other tracks are equally grotesque.
The music itself falls somewhere between straight-forward death metal and hardcore, but doesn't fall into the laziness many deathcore acts bludgeon listeners with. Breakdowns on songs such as "Uterine Industrialisation" or "Self Inflicted Violence" are pummelling and crafted with care, instead of simply chugging away to fill time. The band do an exemplary job of intertwining technical shred with simple grooves and beatdowns, and even include an unnerving industrial song ("Deva's Enemy") to break up the album.
While none of Samsara is necessarily bad, there are moments where tracks start to blend together and lose focus. This doesn't necessarily take away from the amazing moments of the album, but as a whole it could use a bit more variance. That being said, the record makes it clear that Venom Prison are destined to join the top of the new-school death metal pack.