Be warned…
Released 23 February 2018; words by Jason Guest
Released in 2017, Animus is as unsettlingly nightmarish and brutal as the album artwork. Uncompromising, bludgeoning, and devastating, there is not a moment on this album where the band lets up. To say this is intense is barely adequate. It’s like a clenched fist bound in titanium-reinforced barbed wire that’s been welded and padlocked lest the wire dare to even think of budging slightly and letting the white knuckles resume the faintest shade of fleshly pink.
The ten album tracks are jagged, jarring, slamming, cruel, punishing, ruthless, relentless, and… well, every nasty adjective applies here. And so while most if not all albums of this ilk usually tick every nasty adjective box, Venom Prison wield their weapons well and Animus, as the band’s first full length, stands as a defiant and devastating statement of their intent and of their potential. With riffs and malformed melodies such as being strangled out of the guitars and the damage being done by both the drumming and Larissa’s violent bark – her bile as potent as her damning lyrics, what they will do next remains to be seen but it promises to be something purely ugly. And as tight and potent as the album is, so are the five live tracks. If you already have the album, it’s the live tracks that make this release worth considering buying again. If you don’t have it, now is the time to get hold of it.
When Venom Prison played at The Flapper in November 2017 (reviewed here), they left that place damaged, leaving much in the way of now-crumbling-cement between very-definitely-fractured bricks. And with this malicious mob playing alongside Trivium and Power Trip (with Code Orange in the UK) on a European tour through March and April, you can witness them in the flesh. Be warned. Every venue is under threat.
Track list:
- Syllogism
- Abysmal Agony
- Celestial Patricide
- Desecration Of Human Privilege
- Corrode The Black Sun
- Immanetize Eschaton
- The Exquisite Taste of Selfishness
- Devoid
- Perpetrator Emasculation
- Womb Forced Animus
- Babylon The Whore (Live)
- Descration Of Human Privilege (Live)
- Corrode The Black Sun (Live)
- Devoid (Live)
- Perpetrator Emasculation (Live)
