Paraphilia – The Memory of Death Given Form
Release Date: 7th April 2023
Label: Self Released
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal
FFO: Bloodbath, Hate Eternal, Suffocation, Devourment.
Review By: Rick Farley
Paraphilia is an American death metal band hailing from the pacific northwest. This cellar dwelling duo debuted their nasty brand of guttural destruction in the form of 2021’s EP Primordium of Sinister Butchery. A frenzied titanic sized sixteen minute beatdown containing a vicious cover of Deicide’s, They are the Children of the Underworld. Now 2023, brings us their debut full length The Memory of Death Given Form. Self-released by the band; this record is already creating some major ruckus in death metals underground circle.
Comprised solely of SP (vocals/guitars/bass/programming) and KRP (vocals/lyrics), Paraphilia’s brand of death metal is of the thick and chunky variety. Foot stomping groove mixed with gut punching brutality. This unmerciful bastard child snorts, snarls, growls, and lurks about waiting to hammer your bones into dust. The song structures are complex enough to impress, but also memorable and downright unforgiving in the headbanging department. With a touch of the old school, some intricate guitar dissonance, masterfully written songs, and teeth loosening heaviness, The Memory of Death Given Form will delight and destroy even the hardened of death metal elites.
Chock-full of sophisticated dense riffs and relentless drum pummelling that’s nothing short of being an aural sledgehammer, the album kicks off with a crushing track that takes no prisoners. Technically proficient but insanely groovy, Coruscation is a thick beast of jarring tempos and vomit inducing guitar savagery. Harsh, drawn out gutturals over rhythmic guitar mayhem is enough to make anyone feel like they could run straight through a brick wall. Unadulterated death metal ferocity.
Stelliferous Unmaking is a hook laden, face grimacing dose of slam inspired modern death metal. Dominated by a bouncy swagger, the guitars and low end are disgustingly heavy. Both grooving under thick double kick, for the first half of the song until things get a little tighter in the complexity department. Swarming riffs crammed into small spaces with heart stopping tempo changes ramps up the unnerving feeling of dread and eventual annihilation. The difference in growls from both members go from grotesquely low to horrifically low. In terms of sheer blistering intensity, this track will take your head clean off.
Murderous grinding and churning guitars complete with pinch harmonic accents, Supernal Rebuke is a dissonant taste of some Trey Azagthoth influence riffing. What the track lacks in hookiness it makes up for in shrouded creativity and spider like fretwork frenzy. Bursting at the seams with stylistic harmonies that eventually weave the track into a deadly maelstrom of rapid chugging thrashiness that will lay waste to your chest cavity.
If I were to have any criticisms though, it would be, while these songs are all absolutely top-notch, there’s only six of them coming in at barely over thirty minutes. The seventh song is a cover of the death metal classic Eaten, originally written by Bloodbath. Don’t get me wrong, their cover is a solid rendition and quite enjoyable, I just personally find that song to be untouchable and would much rather have had another original song which probably would have taken the score up at least another half notch. With that said, The Memory of Death Given Form, to put it bluntly, is stupid fucking good, and you would be hard-pressed to find any better death metal this year. 
(4 / 5)
