Review Summary: Tracks with enough bite to match the venom…
It’s not often that modern metal gets to call upon a past era and somehow manages to reinvigorate it. That’s not to say that
Erebos is innovative; especially when compared to Venom Prison’s
Samsara, rather the group’s newest effort blends the burly nostalgic riffs born from noughties metalcore while winding back the crushing death metal leanings found in the record released before it. These musical motifs are gift-wrapped in a proficient display of the genre’s better tropes, bridging the gap between virulent instrumental backdrops, forward lyricism and unbelievably applicable mainstream aesthetic.
Erebos sits above the jaded misconceptions of where ‘core’ music should be considered in a modern setting, hitting harder in spite of the more simplistic direction their music now takes. Of course calling Venom Prison’s music
simplistic is about as accurate as calling a puppy a tiger,
Erebos is chock full of monstrous riffs that snap and lock into place while jagged melody dart in and around the fierce vocals from Larissa Stupar.
Erebos is a top tier metalcore hybrid, naysayers be damned.
When we really knuckle down to Venom Prison’s style, umbrella terms like hardcore, death and metalcore seem largely overreaching. Still, it’s hard not to lump the band’s musical style into some, if not all of these terms hit home like Bilbo Baggins wishing someone a “good day” (“all of them at once I suppose”).
Erebos may lean closer to the mainstream than the records that came before it and yet, the music remains just as dynamic, brutal and proficient as ever.
F
uck. I’m still generalising.
“Born from Chaos” gently ebbs into consciousness, kicks and snare patterns accent a light chant that builds into Larissa Stupar gruff screams. “Judges of the Underworld” follows soon thereafter; a wash of gravitas, snare fills and even blasting musicianship. More poignant is the even screams layered over the top, a less than obvious hook imparts strength, limiting the chance that cliched lines would diminish the central theme. Earworms force their way through unstinting riffs and thick percussive chops, eventual mainstays for a live setting while half tempo progressions and breakdown riffs (used sparingly) lift the track’s overall brutality levels. “Nemesis” follows suit, taking vocal influence notes from the likes of Slipknot,
Iowa (especially in regards to the opening stanza), before adding those modern
all-important Venom Prison touches. And yet, the album shifts, as if aware of its current trajectory, discarding (at least for a while) the strictly aggressive overtones into something more melodic, cerebral and contrastingly
yin against the
yang. “Pain of Oizys” is the exact amount of dichotomy the record needs. Clean guitar tones and informal vocals allow for moments of self observation. This might have something to do with the song’s contextual tones:
coming to terms with depression, trauma and PTSD and its lyrics reach further depending on the listener:
”Bow to no one - off your knees/I find peace in the roughest seas/Self destruction - soul disease/Live or die - I won’t decease”. How you stand is up to you, even if it’s not as cut and dry as that reads.
“Golden Apples of the Hesperides” returns the album to its more natural, heavier path. Fierce musicianship runs parallel to the track’s lyrics. Ominous tones blanket a building atmosphere, sultry notes bombarded to the side by some of the fiercest riffs on the record. Simple but heavy—allowing Stupar to thoroughly stamp her presence; screams lash out, drawing blood with every well-placed stroke. The tail end of the album however peters out lightly, reforming its compositions to the near complacent run of familiar sounds. It’s a small issue, quickly resolved by leaning into some of the group’s more progressive, atmospheric climes and yet, the album’s last twenty minutes pass by without much incident.
After considering the sum of all its parts,
Erebos is a hell-of-a-record, feeding into all the conditions that would cater to both the mainstream world and that of a niched, more expressive take on what being defined as ‘core’ is. For all of its genre trappings,
Erebos sounds
modern, even when it's hurtling through a musical time machine; landing somewhere twenty years ago. Venom Prison’s musical scope has expanded again with this release, putting them [once again] on the trajectory for bigger and better things—while cementing this U.K. based group as purveyors of chaos and tasteful riffs.
