Venom Prison - Samsara

Venom Prison have been making relatively big waves rather quickly since the one-two punches of their debut EPs in 2015 (Defy the Tyrant and The Primordial Chaos), and their rather well-received debut LP in 2016 (Animus) landed them an opening spot on tour with Trivium. And for the most part, I can’t really find a reason to burst the hype bubble surrounding them. The band’s animalistic and 1st-wave-metalcore-influenced approach to furiously aggressive death metal . While that blend of styles often beckons the deathcore label, I and most of the band’s fans wouldnt really call the music they make deathcore in the most definitive sense; their sound is so much closer to straight-up death metal, and even powerviolence, than it is to deathcore. The hardcore elements the band bring in only really serve to enhance the punch their death metal instrumentation brings, and to vary up the vocal delivery from time to time. But for the most part, Venom Prison don’t resort to breakdowns, typical metalcore rhythms, or other clichés populating the genre, and their music is stronger for it.

If there’s one thing that hits a little pet peeve of mine about them, it’s the use of that common production trick of layering high screams and guttural growls simultaneously. I just think it’s a technique that’s way overdone at this point, almost comes across as a crutch to artifically boost the savagery of a vocalist’s performance (which of course doesn’t translate live without backing tracks or backing vocals, both of which are rarely used), and the karaoke boy in me personally just doesn’t know which part to do when it comes around. I know that’s a lot of griping about a minor thing, but it is assuredly just a minor gripe, and in Venom Prison’s case, it’s not something that comes up all to frequently either. Though it does come up on this album, to my minor dismay. Nit-picking aside though, Samsara is mostly a satisfying follow-up to Animus and its preceding EPs. While I do try my best to avoid a lot of outside input on albums before writing about them, I wasn’t able to avoid stumbling across a lot of the fanfare surrounding this album, with so many hailing it as a massive stride for the band and an impressive show of growth from their past works.

While I agree that Venom Prison is certainly making some of death metal’s most vibrant and confident material these days for a band as young as they are, I wouldn’t say the step up from Animus to Samsara puts them at the world class level just yet. I do quite like this album though, and there are indeed several compositional high points to be found throughout the exceptionally well-mixed and well-mastered track list that highlight the power of Venom Prison’s sound. The opening track, “Matriphagy”, unfortunately dabbles in the aforementioned scream/growl production technique, but it’s not enough to render it a poor introduction to the album. With slick guitar grooves juxtaposed by ferocious double-bass and tom drum accents, it’s one of the more straightforward cuts on the album, with the guitar leads and rhythms being standout elements of the composition, which foreshadows their power and prominence in the writing on the songs to come. While the band display fine chemistry among all the instrumentalists and Larissa Stupar’s vocal performances, it is most often the creativity of the guitar work that takes center stage on these songs.

It is in no way, the guitars doing all the work though, as the consistent virtuosity of Joe Bills’ percussive performances provides the meat for guitarists Ben Thomas and Ash Gray to season, as the relentless ripper “Uterine Industrialization”, whose breakdown still feels more death metal than deathcore, exemplies magnificently. Like I said though, it is the team effort on this album that allows Venom Prison to traverse such wild, dynamic compositions is the key tomthe album’s consistency, and the synchronicity between the merciless tom drum pounding and thrash-style soloing and riffing on “Self Inflicted Violence” makes it one of my particular favorites to headbang to on the album.

The surprisingly melodic guitar line opening “Asura’s Realm” is another nice bit of versatility from the guitarists, and it eventually gives way to more relentlessly forceful death metal at high speed, while still quickly coming back into some more slightly melodeath-inspired lead work. Though it is at the short breakdown of sorts when the band makes their hardcore roots perhaps the most prominent on the whole album.

Dipping into (relatively) outside musical realms “Sadistic Rituals” goes for a bit of black metal eeriness in its guitar section, but it’s probably the most questionable foray the band go off on. They don’t seem to really bring what makes black metal so captivating to their style, and instead kind of get stuck in limbo between short blackened segments cut up by rather standard guitar work for them.

The band go for more direct, old-school, Floridian death metal on the first of the pair of closing tracks, “Dukkha”, which continues to highlight the stylistic versatility the guitarists especially are able to work their playing into. The final song and the album’s longest, “Naraka”, clearly intended to be at least somewhat of a grand finale to the band’s longest project to date, indeed is a showcase for the guitarists, as they make use of melodic pull-off soloing, dynamic speed changes from groove to groove, melodic dual leads, and even some ominous, yet somewhat emotive ambience, making for a pretty intense ending to an already intense album.

Samsara is a pretty badass sophomore full-length for Venom Prison and one that indeed solidifies them as one of the most promising young bands contributing to death metal today. As enrapturing as this album is, I still feel like there is room for growth for Venom Prison, which is not say this album has any glaring fundamental flaws, rather that what room there is to improve on is so subtle that a band on their trajectory should be able to make those continued strides, and I hope they do. As far as performances, technicality, and production go, the band are prety much set; from here it’s just continuing to perfect the writing, and perhaps tailoring it even more to their unique style, which is indeed some more hard work. There’s also the option the band could choose to vary up their sound a bit by expanding their sonic arsenal, which would be a bold move they’d have to be very confident in making.

But that’s me getting too ahead of myself and possibly even Venom Prison when there’s a fantastic new album with us here and now. Even if the maturation the band underwent between Samsara and Animus might be a bit overstated by fans, it is still the kind of sophomore album most bands would kill to make, and it’s probably one of, if not my number one, favorite of the year so far. This band definitely has a bright future ahead, and I hope they continue to push themselves toward death metal mastery on whatever comes next for them.

voracious pups/10