It's hard to get noticed these days, and that's just the music business we're talking about here. Go on Youtube or Bandcamp or wherever and you can hear a thousand bands which sound exactly like that other band you like. That may feel sensible at first, listening to a lot more of what you love most, but before long, the realities of listener fatigue kick in, and you'll probably wonder why all these bands even exist.

Those thousand bands are more like ten-thousand bands when you decide to wade into the abyss that is Death Metal. Throw two darts at a wall of Death metal bands and Charlie Day's string meme leaps to mind pretty quickly in this situation. Today one of our darts landed on AZOTHYST, a quartet of anonymous Toronto-based Death metallers. Though they made their live debut in late 2017, it wasn't until October of 2021 that the band cobbled together an EP, "Blood Of Dead God".

Well, the listener surely won't blame them for trying, because they're certainly doing that much. These guys, whoever they are, are very good at making Death metal the way fans have liked it. Four excellent tracks are featured, each one soaked in raw brutality, each one steeped in the genre's requisite hallmarks. "Bestial Blood Temple Of Ritual Predation" encompasses this, as does "Eradication Altar", which hold up well enough that they should get onto Death metal radio.

But what else is here? The other two songs can be described almost the exact same way as those two. The remaining two tracks are fillers, ranging from evil mantra to vaguely urbane. The drumming is nearly identical in every song. In twenty minutes across six tracks, you are not told anything you did not already know. It's Death metal for people who love Death metal, nothing more and nothing less.

The fact that you don't know who's in the band is a funny hook, sure, but will it convince the Death Metal faithful to give this new EP a spin? The genre's true believers may need some persuading, to say nothing of the outsiders looking for a way in. Ready or not, AZOTHYST has put their brand out there, complete with the bundle-of-sticks logo AND a cryptic symbol to boot. Perhaps they can give it some more gas for the full-length debut? Whatever the band decides to do next, for now at least, "Blood Of Dead God" can give Death metal fans the relief of knowing that at least some musicians still know how to play it well.