Cemetery Urn: Barbaric Retribution (2018)

I am a big fan of Hells Headbangers Records.  Every few months or so, I go to their site and order a bunch of their new releases.  The label definitely has a typical sound, of sorts.  They tend to release works by bands that incorporate influences from death, black and thrash metal, along with a fair amount of punk influence.  This sound tends to grab my attention.  And so it was that I ended up grabbing this release.

The Australian band is decidedly more death metal in their approach, but it is a dark and grimy form of occult death metal that has much more in common with groups like Angelcorpse and their countrymen in Bestial Warlust and Abominator (which makes sense since the guitarist was in BOTH bands, and I wrote this before seeing that).  It is a thunderous and grotesque sound with skull-crushing riffs.  There is a ton of bottom end to the sound too, making the riffs sound dense and murky.  The vocals too are extreme, even for this form of metal.  They are deep and guttural with a swampy tone to them as well.  What results is a tremendously heavy album, in all the right ways.

If there is a problem with the release it is that the songs tend to run together a little bit and there is not often something that truly stands out.  Cemetery Urn seems more concerned with completely pummeling the listener than with writing something truly memorable.  And thus the band can kind of get lost among other bands that perform a similar style.

All that being said, this is a suitably punishing album for occult death metal.  Australia has once again delivered a quality extreme metal band.  The country is well-known for its extreme metal scene and Cemetery Urn is yet another example of that.