After 15 years thriving in the dark underground extreme scene, New Zealand VASSAFOR are now out with their second LP Malediction, published by Debemur Morti Productions. Setting high standards with their first double debut Obsidian Codex, we find once again VK as the mastermind behind this trashing stream of evil and rotting behemoth: keeping its predecessor monumentality and obscenity well alive, it moves the balance toward a more melodic side. War metal spurts leave the place for more complex and layered phrasing, building towers upon scorched and violent landscapes on which they inexorably collapse. VASSAFOR keeps the listener slowly burning on a binding and mesmerizing flame, before shredding their guts with primal riffing, in a merciless vortex. We see a first example of this modus operandi in "Devourer Of A Thousand Worlds", as well as in "Emergence (of an Unconquerable One) and "Elegy Of The Accurser", born of the same spawn but left evolving (more apt. degenerating) each on their own sick path, once driven by a feral fury once lead by a unstoppable force. VK vocals stand guard in the background, a cracking hissing voice as the narrator of this descent into darkness. "Black Winds Victoryant"

 "Black Winds Victoryant" is a doom midtempo track, clinging to VASSAFOR death metal blood, bringing our now senseless body toward the altar of the ultimate sacrifice of "Illumination of the Sinister", whose fury will finally scoop the last vestige of form and abandon us into a void. "Malediction" is a step forward for VASSAFOR sound which may be seen as brave: they polished what we heard in their debut, moving toward more layered structures. What is still there is the formless absurdity, a chiseled and well planned and designed obscenity.