Puteraeon – Quindecennial Horror (EP)
Release Date: 8th March 2024
Label: Emanzipation Productions
Stream
Genre: Swedish Death Metal, Death Metal, OSDM.
FFO: Grave, Entombed, Paganizer, Demonical, Unleashed, Dismember.
Review By: Rick Farley
Anytime a band re-records any of their classic songs or albums, that bands general fanbase seems to get all up in their feelings and proceeds to cast it off as a cash grab, pure blasphemy or plain ignores it. It never fails, and in most cases, it is warranted, however I am here to tell you that Puteraeon is most definitely the exception. Celebrating their 15th anniversary as horror death metal stalwarts, this Swedish Chtulhian terror quartet takes their Lovecraft inspired death metal and gives it a little 2024 upgrade. The band choose five different head smashing songs spanning their decade and a half reign of chainsaw guitar flavoured meat grinding from the very first one ever written, “The Plague” from their 2008 demo Fascination for Mutilation demo to “Storm over Devil’s Reef”, taken from their 2011 debut album The Esoteric Order. Quindecennial Horror being released by Emanzipation Productions is an EP that is meant as a celebratory look back at their career up to this point, a gift for the fans if you will. Buzzsaw guitars, pounding drums, groovy nastiness, entrails, and corpses, yeah, it’s all here.
If you have never heard of Puteraeon, which features members and ex members of bands like Thorium, Taetre, Nominon, One Man Army and The Undead Quartet, the credentials for grinding, crushing, ugly and groovy death metal are most certainly here. Coupled with the mixing and mastering of the mighty Dan Swanö (Edge of sanity, Bloodbath), Quindecennial Horror is more than just your average EP. It is twenty minutes of horrifying old school Swedish death metal that not only keeps its original heart and soul, but sounds more suffocating, uglier, and heavier than the original recordings. The production is bigger, muddier, and certainly beefier, which gives these tracks new life while maintaining everything that is great about them to begin with. The tracks do not sway far from their original form in terms of reworking them, but damn do they sound incredible. Headbanging groves with catchy melodies, thick double bass, and vomiting style growls, sign me up.
Since Quindecennial Horror is an EP of previously established songs, I will not spend too much time on this review, but know this, if you are already a fan, you will be doing yourself a disservice by not checking this out. It is loud, nasty, and delightfully grimy. Puteraeon brings these songs back from the dead or undead, in a way that will please the gory heart of any Swedish death metal fan, new or old.
(4 / 5)
