ABYSMAL WINDS is a Swedish death metal band, who formed in 2020. After a demo in 2022, the band is ready to drop their debut full-length “Magna Pestilenciaa.” This is an impressively raw, brutal form of death metal. It’s dark, musty, and pure evil and chock full of hellish riffs and huge grooves. The atmosphere is definitely sulphric and abrasive as being sandblasted in the face. I like the production/mix a lot too. It has a DIY feel to it without being so raw that it isn’t enjoyable. But the sound matches and compliments the songwriting and that is always a plus. The album begins with the instrumental intro “Incantation” and it’s actually not a waste of my time like most intros. The ringing of the bell heightens the atmosphere of the undead riffs. The song does a decent job of introducing the listener to the album and setting up for the first proper track.

That song, “Sacrilegious,” is a total banger. Big grooves, tight drumming, and abrasive as hell vocals rush by in a holy storm of fury. The drop at the 1:51 mark is intense, the blast beats send the song into overdrive. And that’s really the charm of the album: just when it can’t possibly get any more intense, it does. It’s the death metal of “But wait! There’s more!” “Ivory Tomb,” is a standout for me because after the 2:35 mark, the tempo slows a bit and they have this doomed out feel to it. The higher pitched, depraved death screams work in its favor too, giving the song a slightly different feel than some of the others.

The final, and title, track is tight as hell with the first three minutes or so being a rage fest before opening the riffs up a bit as a cold as the grave round of riffs rattles through to the end. Unfortunately, there isn’t much in the way of variety on the album which holds it back in my opinion, at least somewhat. Their style isn’t necessarily boring, as every song is good, but they don’t offer much in the way other than just running through each song from point A to B. There isn’t much varying in the tempo or any real hooks embedded in the song structure. This isn’t a bad thing, per say, but it does tend to get monotonous despite its short runtime of just over 30 minutes.

All in all, ABYSMAL WINDS have crafted a death metal album with an incredible atmosphere and a DIY production job that works in their favor. While not a bad album by any means, there just isn’t enough here to really blow me away. There has been A LOT of great death metal albums this year. As this year marches ever forward to its own death, the competition is fierce and “Magna Pesilencia” , while solid, is missing that special factor to make it stand out in the crowd.