Depravity – Evil Upheaval – Album Review

There’s a death metal revolution happening over at Transcending Obscurity Records, a reaffirmation of death metal’s founding principles set to the thrilling backdrop of old-school US death metal, old-school Scandinavian death metal and worldwide technical/progressive death metal…..and the next band on Transcending Obscurity’s roster to drop a death metal bomb of some magnitude is Australia’s Depravity, with their debut full length album Evil Upheaval.

Imagine, if you will, that all the forces of hell have been unleashed and you are on the receiving end of their entire, eviscerating arsenal. Pictured it? Good, then you’ll be half way to envisaging the sonic assault of Evil Upheaval.

Featuring a perpetual blitzkrieg of percussive bombardment and riffs that fly at you at an astonishing rate – drilling their way into your brain like those fuckin’ orb things from Phantasm, until you’re left a drilling, dribbling, lobotomised mess – Evil Upheaval is a complete head-fuck of technicality, cannily combined with an old-school malevolence.

Fans of Immolation, Formulas Fatal To The Flesh era Morbid Angel, Hour of Penance, Drawn and Quartered and  Incantation will revel in this diabolical filth, gorging on the sheer audacity of a group of musicians who seem hell-bent on slamming old school death metal and modern, tech obsessed, death metal together to form the perfect whole. Of course, perfection is nigh on impossible to achieve and Depravity aren’t quite there yet. That being said, Evil Upheaval is a thrillingly violent experience and as debuts go, this is damn impressive. 8/10

Evil Upheaval is due for release on 30th April, 2018 via Transcending Obscurity Records and you can pre-order it via Bandcamp here.