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Worship Metal’s 5 Greatest UK Death Metal Albums Of 2020!

2020 was pretty shite. Luckily, UK death metal was great!

The UK continued to churn out high calibre death metal in 2020 and Worship Metal have selected the 5 releases we feel are most worthy of your attention.

Worship Metal’s 5 Greatest UK Death Metal Releases Of 2020…..

5. Twitch of the Death Nerve – A Resting Place For The Wrathful

Released: 27th March 2020 via Comatose Music

After a considerable 6 year wait for a follow up to 2014’s barbaric A New Code Of Morality, anyone with a penchant for  the nastiest of noise would have been a cock-a-fuckin’-hoop to witness London’s Twitch Of The Death Nerve return with A Resting Place For The Wrathful.

Brutal, technical and prone to skin-flaying bouts of primal aggression, Twitch Of the Death Nerve’s wall of violent sound is as oppressive as they come and those not accustomed to the all-out assault of the brutal death metal genre may balk at the perceived lack of diversity on display. Which would be missing the point. A Resting Place For The Wrathful is designed for those who revel in extremity and whose masochistic, deranged tendencies permanently push them to seek out a challenge of this kind.

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4. Ingested – Where Only Gods May Tread

Released: 14th August 2020 via Unique Leader Records

The ever reliable Ingested returned in 2020 with another dose of diabolic depravity in the shape of Where Only Gods May Tread! Chugging and slamming like their very lives depended on it, with Where Only Gods May Tread Ingested may not have covered any new ground but they did provide a satisfying slug of earth-shattering breakdowns.

A few canny guest appearances didn’t harm matter either, with Vincent Bennett (The Acacia Strain), Kublai Kahn’s Matt Honeycutt and even Crowbar’s Kirk Windstein’s instantly recognisable baritone adding considerable heft to proceedings.

Future albums may warrant braver choices but, for now, Where Only Gods May Tread was gratefully received.

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3. Live Burial – Unending Futility

Released: 3rd April 2020 via Transcending Obscurity Records.

Sitting at the doomier end of death metal, Newcastle’s Live Burial continued to exhume the decaying corpses of death metal’s formidable past with sophomore album, Unending Futility.

With a strong whiff of Asphyx informing much of the slower, doomier sections – and more than a little Bolt Thrower, Incantation and Death (particularly in the vocals) adding layers to their sound, Live Burial are old-school death metal through and through….but also savvy enough to forge their own morbidly atmospheric and brutally efficient path; despite their obvious influences.

With Unending Futility, Live Burial’s ascendency continues unabated and it’s clear that this was their most mature, most malevolent and most multifaceted release of their career to date!

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2. Benediction – Scriptures

 

Released: 16th October 2020 via Nuclear Blast.

The comeback album us old-school death metal lovin’ Brits were most looking forward to ended up being one of  the finest death metal releases of 2020, regardless of geographical location!

As enamoured with the most brutal thrash as it was death metal, Benediction‘s Scriptures simply let fly with a shit-storm of catchy carnage in aural form. While obliterating opener “Scriptures Of I” was unadulterated deathly thrashing rage – and a blast of old-school malevolence that ticked all the right boxes – the mid-tempo grooves that informed much of their earlier work were still evident on the crushing “In Our Hands, the Scars” and the Bolt Thrower-esque stomp of “Tear Off These Wings”.

While expectations were understandably high for this album, it’s fair to say that Scriptures was an unmitigated success and rivalled anything released by the old-school aping new pups of 2020.

Scriptures was the sacred writings of death metal gods!

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1. Cryptic Shift – Visitations From Enceladus

Released: 4th May 2020 via Blood Harvest.

The most ambitious album to emerge from the UK death metal scene in many a year, Cryptic Shift‘s Visitations From Enceladus was a progressive death metal voyage par excellence that surpassed all expectations and surely confirmed itself as one of, if not the most impressive progressive / technical death metal opus’ of 2020.

Opening with the progressive monster that is “Moonbelt Immolator” was a brave move but one backed up by the kind of chops that marked out Atheist, Blood Incantation, Voivod, Gorguts and Vektor as leaders of their chosen fields. A truly outstanding piece of work, this nearly 26 minute intergalactic colossus would have had Chuck Schuldiner nervously watching his back if it had been released 25 years ago; such is the imagination and skill on display.

The remaining three tracks were no slouches either, with Cryptic Shift taking us all on an “inter-dimensional sci-fi quest” of “pure imagination and space fiction worship” and, somehow, Visitations From Enceladus remained mesmerisingly enjoyable in a manner that fully transcended its deeply progressive tendencies, while proving to be a simply sensational gift of technically astonishing deathly thrashing rage!

About Chris Jennings (1963 Articles)
I love metal. Always have. Always will. As editor of Worship Metal - a site dedicated to being as positive about metal and its myriad of sub-genres as possible - my aim is to 'worship' metal through honest reviews, current news and a wide variety of features; offering the same exposure to underground bands as we do to mainstream/well known acts. Our mantra; the bands are partners and we exist to serve the bands \m/

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