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Released on October 30, 2015 via Dark Descent Records
In terms of old-school death metal, I’ve always seen the defining division between fans as two schools of thought. You have those who prefer Spiritual Healing and those who prefer The Sound of Perseverance; they’re the same types that scoff at or laud Focus respectively. While it’s not always the case, I find it’s less the band or scene than the ideology and practicum behind them, owing allegiance either to sheer brutality or experimentalism.
To that point, I’ve also found that if you fall into the latter categories in those previous examples – which, full disclosure, I certainly do – then you’re likely to be a fan of the Gothenburg scene too, possibly even more so than if you don’t. At least in my own case the opposite is true as well, so when I heard about the so-called “New Wave of Old-School Death Metal,” a resurgence heavily influenced by the progressive Swedish variant of the genre, I was a little hesitant. Progressive throwbacks seem counter-intuitive; “progressive” isn’t just supposed to mean long solos and longer songs, and if you aren’t innovating in some way there’s something clearly wrong.
Then I took a look at Horrendous, who made waves (and lots of best-of-the-year lists) with last year’s Ecdysis, an album that, on the surface, appeared to be a bundle of contradictions: an American band playing Swedish-influenced progressive death metal with a stripped-down approach. And it’s for that exact reason it worked; rather than regurgitate metal dogma, they innovated by simplifying. If you need any more indication that they’ve got the formula down to a science, consider that the east coast trio has already returned with Anareta, a follow-up barely a year later that gives another helping of death metal excellence, albeit with a slightly different delivery.
While it might look as though little has changed at first, there are more than a few notable differences; the sound is cleaned up, the songs are even more direct and yet, paradoxically, Anareta follows a much more traditionally “progressive” format. It’s missing some of the odder deviations from Ecdysis – the synth opening, the exclusively acoustic ‘The Vermillion’, even the choral, reverberating dirty vocal harmonies for the most part (though they do make a return in ‘Ozymandias’) – and the void has been supplanted by an extended structure throughout; for reference, only one song on Anareta is under 5 minutes, whereas only two went over that mark on the preceding album.
It’s not just a superficial change in length, either; while still song-oriented, the album feels more grandiose, songs being given time to build up or deconstruct midway through, while the core retains the essential qualities found in their earlier work. It’s “progressive” without being proggy, not so much a furtherance of what made them unique within the movement, nor assimilation into it, but a side-step, taking what they think is most conducive to their sound and discarding the rest. It’s hard to argue with the result; ‘The Nihilist’ solidifies Horrendous as a band that knows how to start an album, standing just as strong – and in my opinion, stronger – than ‘The Stranger’.
The rest of the album stands as a solid, differential experience with few outliers, and I say that in a mostly positive way; Horrendous play their hand a little early with the one-two punch of ‘The Nihilist’ and ‘Ozymandias’, but there isn’t a bad song to be found and, more than that, everything flows exceedingly well. Still, what defines Anareta as an experience, and more importantly separates it from its predecessor, is the way that it toes the line between embodying and altering stylistic conventions. It’s something of a twin album to Ecdysis; both are indebted to yet defying their influences, but Anareta stands as a unique take on the same well-worn ideas: it manages to challenge expectations for both the band and the genre, while keeping the core of what Horrendous is the same, and for that reason alone it’s worth checking out.
