Another month of Lockdown is about to begin and I’m finding that I need a little more motivation to keep up with the home workouts. Luckily for me, the debut album from Lancaster death metallers and winners of 2015’s Metal to the Masses, Bloodyard, has just landed. Ladies and gentlemen… Orchard of Corpses.
The band consists of Donna Hurd on vocals, Nick Adamson on guitar, Dave Cowley on bass, and Matty Lee on drums. The opener “Blood Begets Blood” immediately introduces itself, looking to do some severe eardrum damage with its ferocity. Similarly, “Mortem” really doesn’t give you time to recover with its mix of styles.
One of the shortest tracks (and my favourite on the album) “Rupture the Mask” is followed by the title track “Orchard of Corpses”, itself an absolute gem and which has some great OSDM elements to it.
“All Hail the Crimson King” thrashes its way into “Stack the Pyre” which contains a simply enormous riff. The shortest track, “Choke”, is no-nonsense and makes sure you are giving the album the attention it deserves… and if you weren’t, it has “Purge the Rot” for some extreme backup.
The final track, “Antithesis”, is a total and pleasant surprise – slow, brooding, and at over 9 minutes in length, a breath of fresh air showing the real mix of death, groove, black, and doom and has an absolutely perfect send-off with a fantastic spoken-word piece right at the end.
This debut is a wonderful accumulation of raw, hard-hitting, skull-pounding savagery encased in an orb of melancholy.
Orchard Of Corpses will be released on May 1st
