Review by Tara on February 9, 2016.

2016 is looking like a promising year as far as new metal is concerned.
With it brings the return of Philadelphia, PA's Castle Freak with a brand spanking new slab of horror infused death metal.

Human Hive is five tracks of in-your-face gore metal. It features re-recordings of two older tracks (Sickening Corpses and Toxic Winds) and a cover of Boneyard, originally performed by legendary gore maniacs Impetigo.

The good: Listening to Human Hive took me back some years, primarily to the early 2000s during that whole Carcass clone revival. Castle Freak feels like they should be respectfully be lumped into that sub genre among the likes of Engorged, Frightmare and The County Medical Examiners, just to name a few. I'll never get tired of shitty horror movie samples being used in death metal and these guys use some gems, specifically the track Matul which pulls its title and sample use from the Lucio Fulci classic film Zombi.

And onto the bad: the production sounds a bit muddy at times. Maybe we'll get something a bit cleaner on future releases. Also, (yes I know it's an EP) I wish this were longer! The momentum on Human Hive doesn't let up and will make the listener crave more.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, look for Human Hive to drop on 3/19/16 in cassette and digital formats. From my understanding, it will be available in very limited quanities so act fast to grab your copy! Anyone who previously followed Castle Freak will be pleased with what they hear and Human Hive is sure to bring new fans into their sick and twisted realm. Long live gore!

Rating: 8 out of 10