Turkey is a country that is a democracy (and remembering: not all muslins are fundamentalists, because Islam preaches love and respect), and so, there’s a huge Metal scene there, with expressive acts playing Metal in ant genres you want. But as happens anywhere in the world, there are those acts that prefer to have a more classic appeal into their ways, as the quartet ENGULFED, from Istanbul. Their new full-length, “Unearthly Litanies of Despair”, depicts such feature. Emre Bingol (mixing, mastering) worked in a way along the band to create a brutal and nasty sonority, respecting the Death Metal models created at Morrisound Studios (USA), The Slaughterhouse Studios (UK), and Sunlight Studios (Sweden): it is aggressive and has that disturbing impact, but everything defined and on their due places.

The cover art created by The Art of Morket depicts what will be heard. The quartet works on a classic formula of Death Metal, dealing with influences from USA Death Metal School from the late 80s/early 90s, and it’s not a sin to say that acts as MORBID ANGEL, MONSTROSITY, CANNIBAL CORPSE, IMMOLATION and INCANTATION are huge influences to their music. But pay attention: ‘influences’ doesn’t mean that they’re copying other works. No, not at all, because the band has a personal expression on its music, and unleashes a violent energy on the album. Prepare your ears and necks!

The pyroclastic fury of their music is evident on all the songs, but the best ones for the due presentations are “In the Abyss of Death’s Obscurity” (full of intense blast beats and a true cauldron of fiery guitar riffs and arrangements), “Voidwalker’s Dominion” (another puke of pure Death Metal violence with excellent rhythmic contrasts from bass guitar and drums), “Echoes of Suffering” (the contrasts between bitter slow parts with nasty faster ones is really used in a great way by the quartet), “Cursed Eternity” (the blast beats are amazing, but what very good low tunes on the grunted vocals), and “Occult Incantations”.

Again: the band isn’t playing anything new and not reinventing the wheel, but the music shown on “Unearthly Litanies of Despair” shows that ENGULFED deserves attention from Death Metal fans.