Annihilation – The Undivided Wholeness Of All Things – Album Review

Portugal’s Annihilation specialise in slamming, grinding, filthy, dirty and dank death fuckin’ metal and The Undivided Wholeness Of All Things – the long awaited full length follow up to 2011’s well received Against The Storm – is a crushing slab of aural brutality that more than meets lofty expectations.

Opening with the mid-tempo Obituary-esque grind of instrumental “M.A.S.S”, Annihilation proceed to pick up the pace on “Universal Dismal Collapse”, with jarring technical death metal riffs barging their way through a clattering percussive onslaught and some astonishingly deep guttural growls. It’s a sci-fi influenced death metal epic that practically rips your head off and the technical audacity and compositional skill then continues abated throughout.

Cutting to the chase, this fucker simply smashes its way through your cerebrals at an unbelievable rate; never relenting, all systems set to KILL!

Astoundingly heavy, Annihilation are a technically talented brutal death metal band of quite some calibre, peppering their blast-beats with enough horror atmospherics to balance out the madness. The result is damn impressive, with a variety of pace serving them well as Annihilation reveal themselves to be the science fiction version of Nile, ably conjuring cataclysmic universal imagery with their own distinct sound.

A concise 8 tracks is all Annihilation need to deliver their message in the most viciously succinct way possible. Job well and truly fuckin’ done! 7/10