Ósserp – Els Nous Cants De La Sibil·la
Release Date: 19th August 2022
Label: Eternal Juggernaut Records, Kremón Records, Catábasis Records, Hecatombe Records, Lost Merch, Brutal Arratia Records & Cruzade Records.
Bandcamp
Genre: Blackened Death Grind
FFO: Full of Hell, Mortician, Nails, Necrot, Cattle Decapitation.
Review By: Rick Farley
Els Nous Cants De La Sibil·la just might be the grimiest, most putrid, crustiest piece of death metal/grindcore you’ll hear all year; and it’s beyond fucking glorious. A complete horrifying modification of all your senses from an industrial-sized, blackened, and slaughtering granulator, crushing and grinding the listener without mercy, with bits of mechanical sounds, nasty chainsaw grooved riffs, fierce tremolo picked black metal melodies and punishing technical drums. Painfully brutal, this is a bleak, suffocating gristle-filled dose of extreme metal loaded with roaring growls, screams and tormented hardcore style shouts. This is not for the faint of heart or casual metal fan. This album is extremely ugly, with moments of sheer bile. It’s repulsive to a point, but still manages to bang heads with grindy blackened death metal without sacrificing hooks or catchiness. There’s no hiding from the darkness that lurks within this gaping bowel of hell, burning humankind for all eternity.
Ósserp the beasts of Catalan death grind return with their gut-wrenching third full length album. Formed in Spain’s Catalonia region in twenty-twelve, this infernal horror is about to grate some flesh, break some bones and bash anything still living in your body. The band is very much blackened death metal, but effortlessly mix tinges of industrial, hardcore/crust punk, doom, off kilter solos and heaping amounts of grind. These are all highly skilled musicians, don’t be fooled by all the sludgy filth coming from your soot filled speakers.
El Pes del Buit begins with a nightmarish, industrial mechanical churning that’s grinding your ears. Doomy walls of crusty guitar chords and airy melodies give way to some of the lowest gutturals I’ve heard in quite some time. There’s a jarring atmospheric thickness behind the buzzsaw riffs layering the heaviness with suffocating intensity. Massive chords ring out and chug in a midtempo pace, ending each bar with a spidery note pattern, while subterranean growls bellow from the dark void where seemingly nothing else exists. Percussive symbol hits and open hi hat accentuates the meatiness of the riffs adding hookiness to the oppressive and destroying atmosphere. Less than midway through, more harsh industrial pounding and profuse eeriness is only a precursor of what’s to come. The track ruptures into a diabolic black metal storm with violent blasting only to give way to a lumbering riff complete with bashing groove and gargled drawn out pig squeals. L’Abraçada del Destí is relentlessly paced, ruthless blast beats and frosty tremolo picked riffs leading up to a crust punk midsection with thrashy drums, and hooky feedback filled riff ready to kick your skull in. Closing track Lluna Negra is pit ready with a bone stomping main riff guaranteed to get some people viciously beat down. Middle eastern melodies and solos add versatility to a song that already has many layers. These alone show the complexity of the band’s songs in stylistic shifts of different genre elements, skilfully imbued with the use of layers and space; going from drop-dead speed to doomy walls of sounds and mangled aggressive savagery.
Although Els Nous Cants De La Sibil·la is a grime filled trip through a gore-soaked cavern, the album reaches sonic perfection from the meticulous recording of Aleix Archs at Estudi:Labedoble and mastering by Arthur Rizk. The guitars have an old school Dismember tone with a lot more dirt rubbed in. The bass, while barely audible sludges along, it’s thick but not booming, but there to augment the buzzing guitar sound. It just works. The drums are punchy, cutting through clearly adding high level technical fills and blasting chaos. Low gutturals and screaming shrieks are mixed in so perfectly that it all becomes a carnage filled musical labyrinth with which you will never escape. The songwriting on display is top-notch, every song crushes and structurally uses different elements that work so well together. The album becomes extreme moments of bliss within a horrifyingly violent landscape, just on the cusp of what’s tolerable. Ósserp just may be releasing the album of the year. Absolutely mandatory. 
(5 / 5)
