Strychnos – A Mother’s Curse
Release Date: 4th November 2022
Label: Dark Descent Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal, Black Metal.
FFO: Incantation, Deicide, Marduk, Ex Mortum, Massacre.
Review By: Rick Farley
There’s been no shortage of quality blackened death metal releases so far in 2022. Up till this point, any number of bands could be rattled off with little refute from anyone. It’s my pleasure to say that’s not changing here either.
Strychnos, formed in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1997 by Martin Leth Anderson, just might be the Danish undergrounds best kept secret. A Mother’s Curse is the product of a craft perfected over twenty-five years of toil. Dark and diabolical blackened death metal with an ear to the ground of the old school approach to song writing and aesthetic. The band sounds like they belong in the late 90s, but do not sound like any one band in particular. There’s a freshness to the blasphemous aura that gives you the feeling of discovering an old band, long-lost from years ago, only with some modern touches production wise. A delicate balance between black and death metal that blurs the two into one wicked offering of extreme vehemence. A tinge of black n roll and classic heavy metal add a little extra evil to the already fiendish soundscape.
The nightmarish atmosphere of A Mother’s Curse is created by loose devilish riffs that flow freely until they snarl into a tight chugging crunchiness. The energetic guitars are intricately sculpted chasms of blackened tremolo picking, distorted noisy walls of sound, and infernal leads. The bass is present, but it’s more of a low-end backbone warmth, providing thick heaviness. The drums accent everything in a way that serves the song rather than pure intensity. There’s plenty of double bass and killer fills, but it’s much more rhythmic in nature and very dynamic. The harsh vocals are course and just plain vile that sounds like summoning the dead with every growl. There’s some gang style chants, and a couple spoken word parts that add some variance vocally. This feels like a complete record from front to back, eight songs with a runtime of forty-three hellish minutes. The album has raw production still slightly on the side of modern, keeping everything sounding a little filthy with a bit of fuzziness on the guitars. I wouldn’t have minded the drums to be a tad louder or at least more prominent in the mix, but that’s a very minor gripe, as they still sound good.
With a little touch of Dissection here and a little touch of Obituary there, you’ll find a sinister familiarity about Strychnos that’s hard to shake. The moods shift between terror, hope and tragedy, sounding wretched and malevolent all the way through. Songs like Blessed be the Bastard Reign stomp their way to a hooky oblivion of death metal riffs, not far from having some of Florida’s influence. Horror Sacred Torture Divine is a brutal beating of fast tempos and crushing heaviness. The guttural growls sound huge, almost with a cavernous sound. Manus Nigra tremolo picks furiously while relentless double bass pounds away. The bass pedal slows to a single standard beat with a slow chorded chunky riff bashing you into the ground. A very effective way of changing tempos of the instruments but not the song itself. The final few minutes of The Doppelganger Stare closes out A Mother’s Curse with pure viciousness that summons you to start the suffering all over again. 
(3.5 / 5)
