Review Summary: Seven long years.
Filthy production. Carefully crafted breakdowns. Snare abuse. Fast, noisy riffs punctuated by pinch harmonics. And you can’t forget inhumanly low gutturals. These aspects have defined Devourment’s most notable albums, and their 2019 comeback album tripled down on these elements. Obscene Majesty showed that Devourment still had gas in the tank, seeing that they can still reinvent their sound 20 years later.
So why bring their last album up? Pious Impiety is much like it, but takes more aspects from their Molesting the Decapitated era roots. It’s very “meat and potatoes” in that regard. Most of the song structures consist of slam riffs, occasional ventures into chaos (namely Mortiferous Dependency), with the only hint of melody being over-the-top pinch harmonics.
The production job is just as uncompromising as the music. It continues in Obscene Majesty’s thick-as-sludge sound, with every slam and pinch harmonic cutting through layers of filth. While most slam isn't well suited for this type of treatment, Devourment knows how to use it to make everything more punchy and effective, rather than it being bogged down in monotony.
Pious Impiety does what it sets out to do: a wake-up call to Devourment fans, coming with crushing slams for the whole mosh pit. And it seems to be a precursor to a future album. They’re back yet again, setting yet another standard for slam death metal.
