Death/Death Metal wasn’t born from nothing, but’s wasn’t something intentional. Due the huge influence of VENOM in the first half of the 80s, many Death Metal bands used satanic lyrics (as POSSESSED did), but soon acts as SARCÓFAGO and BLASPHEMY promoted shifts, setting the foundations of what would be Death/Black Metal. And the Italian quartet FERAL FORMS follows a trend into the genre as heard on “Premalignant”, their first release. The first Death/Black Metal thing on their songs is the sonority: crude and harsh in an Old School Death/Black Metal form, organic and dirty, with overloaded distorted tunes. It’s a work signed by Alessandro Perosa (who did the recording) and Gabriele Gramaglia (the one who worked on the mixing and on the mastering), but besides such words can depict something unbearable, it must be said that things are defined, so it’s not extreme hard to understand what the quartet is playing.

The band’s music is attached to the old models of Death/Black Metal heard on releases as “I.N.R.I.” and “Gods of War”, but in a personal way, different from what the ancients did. And as on the band’s ranks are musicians of CLAUSTRUM, GRIME and THE SECRET, it’s not a surprise that the musical work of the quartet shows maturity and personality. It’s technically simple (but not linear), filled with many extreme Metal hooks (especially during some very good rhythmic shifts heard on “Voice from the Altar”). It’s very good to hear such kind of release today, when people thinks that BEHEMOTH is the only model usual for the genre.

“Hunter of Chaos” is a Death/Black Metal song with faster tempos and intense aggressive impact (with a good and old fashioned work from bass guitar and drums on the rhythms). On “Premalignant” the band brought its music to a more sinister and rusty form, even using faster tempos again (with very good guitar riffs and arrangements in the middle of the sound mass). And “Voice from the Altar” shows some interesting rhythmic contrasts, with grunts and shrieks contrasting in a good and harmonic way.

As final words, “Premalignant” is a fine release and shows that FERAL FORMS is a promising name. Just making little adjustments on the sonority, and things will take flight soon.