Brodequin – Harbinger of Woe
Release Date: 22nd March 2024
Label: Season of Mist: Underground Activists
Bandcamp
Genre: Brutal Death Metal, Extreme Metal, Death Metal, Slam, Technical Death Metal.
FFO: Disgorge, Devourment, Gorgasm, Decrepit Birth, Putridity, Liturgy, Dying Fetus.
Review By: Rick Farley
If you are already familiar with Knoxville Tennessee’s death metal band Brodequin (aptly named after an instrument of torture used during the Middle Ages), you already know that they are one of the genres most brutal bands. After nearly two decades of silence, Brodequin returns with new drummer Brennan Shackleford, a new label in Season of Mist and their long awaited fourth album Harbinger of Woe dropping March 22nd, 2024.
The brothers Bailey, Jamie (bass/vocals) and Mike (guitar) started playing brutal death metal all the way back in 1998. They released their debut album Instruments of Torture in 2000, which John Gallagher (Dying Fetus vocalist/guitarist) named as one of the most brutal death metal albums ever. After releasing two more full lengths and a few EPs, the brothers stepped away for personal reasons, leaving the bands future in question.
Their much-anticipated return in 2024 brings us Harbinger of Woe, which proves to be well worth the wait as it is disgustingly fast, intense, and downright abusive. Thunderous blast beats, chaotic jagged riffs, and extreme gutturals tear through ten tracks of unrelenting body destroying brutal death metal. Thirty-two minutes of pure churning violence with the occasional flare of melody, and atmosphere that lets this album breath enough that it never gets stale and feels freshly contemporary. Crushing grooves and blistering double kick pierces through Theresiana like you’re being impaled. Jarring rhythmic shifts and guitar squawks, chugging viciously seeking maximum bloodshed. Of Pillars and Trees is a terrorizing hacking of primal intensity. An onslaught of blast beats and phlegmy gutturals pulverize all the way, until a darkly atmospheric middle section has you terrified and begging for mercy, only to return to the blackened edge of the guitars flaying your skin. The scorching thrashy riffs at the beginning of Suffocation in Ash before total annihilation kicks in, is another reminder of how uniquely well-rounded this album actually is, it is not just the same old breee vocals and used up riffs that run rampant in this subgenre. Harbinger of Woe feels savagely modern, still true to their original sound, but evolved enough to where heads are gonna turn upon hearing it, or be ripped off, either way.
Staying true to the tropes of brutal death metal, Brodequin’s lyrics are focused on the subjects of dismemberment, torture, abuse, and murder. Inspired by real life historical events, Harbinger of Woe touches on the medieval period, where, while there was an explosion of fine art, architecture, and music, there also were fatal means of barbaric torture being used.
“This album is a journey into this lost period of history where brutality and beauty coexist. Beaty, in the arts that were created, but also the beautiful brutality that was needed to engineer deadly devices like the brodequin.”
Harbinger of Woe’s production is a considerable step-up compared to their previous albums, but is still gross as hell. Drums were recorded in Brennan’s drum room in Dallas, Texas, while guitar, bass, and vocals were recorded at Navarre 24 in Harriman, Tennessee. Producer Mike Bailey and mixing/mastering Josh Welshman did an exceptional job with a genre that is often poorly executed. Everything sounds thick, mangled, and dirty, while still being crushingly heavy and clear enough to distinguish what is actually going on.
Without a doubt, this is easily Brodequin’s best album to date, and quite possibly the best brutal death metal album you will hear all year. Time will tell, but Harbinger of Woe will remain in the ears of a whole lot of people the entire time.
(4.5 / 5)
