Review by Vladimir on May 25, 2023.

The darkest hour has come for the lost souls that are about to dwell deep in the Underworld, the realm of Hades. Today’s topic is the Russian black metal band Thanatomass and their debut album Hades, released on May 12th via LVX MorgenStern.

The album is very dissonant and chaotic black metal which sounds as if it crawled out of the underworld. Songs consist of shouting death metal-like harsh vocals, aggressive tremolo riffing, blast beats, as well as some destructive guitar solos and dive bombs. The riffs in particular are done in oldschool fashioned spirit, very macabre and dangerous in style, while also carrying some traces of thrash and death metal influences in them. All the way from the second track 'Templvm Carnalis / Vomit Ceremony', the extremity of each song is consistent and seldom does it slow down with the riffs, even though it has instances with sections in slower tempo. Songs vary in length, with short songs like 'Gravedance Sabbath' and 'The Bone Nimbus', while the rest of them excluding the intro track 'Katabasis (Intromass)', are much longer with about 8, 10 or even 11 minutes of length. The songs do become a bit predictable after the fourth track despite having dynamic arrangements with varying tempos, but it’s not completely one-dimensional to the point where you would lose interest or think that the last song wasn’t over yet. Production-wise it’s a pretty raw sounding album with the kind of distorted guitar tone that was incorporated, along with the echoing vocals that sound as if they’re shouting from the depths of the underworld. I must compliment the fact that the overall production has some oldschool quality to it as well, resembling something that could have easily been released in the 90’s.

Overall, Hades is a pretty simple but also an extreme sounding album, which I think fits only for a certain group of listeners that mostly dig very underground bands with this level of musical aggression. I can’t say that it impressed me, although I will say that it did definitely entertain me to a certain extent. I liked that it isn’t a typical black metal album, and it is due to the fact that there are so many thrash and death metal influences which can be heard from start to finish. There aren’t really similar albums out there that I could compare this to, but I will say that Thanatomass is a band that knows how to express an immense rage and destruction.

Rating: 8 out of 10