KRAANIUM is a brutal death metal band with a penchant for violent slams (if you could not tell from the album title). The five piece are from various parts of the world: Norway, Denmark, Turkey, Finland and the UK. For nearly two decades, the band has continued to up the ante in terms of heaviness, releasing the demo "No Repect for the Dead" followed by four full lengths. Their fifth LP is a strong return for the band after the unfortunate loss of the previous vocalist, Martin Funderud, replaced by Jack Christensen (DECAY OF EXISTENCE, SEPTIC CONGESTION). Over the course of their career, there is a clear heavy influence from brutal death legends DEVOURMENT and the quintet transitions through slams just as seamlessly as the progenitors of the slam genre itself.

Opening with a famous Edward Kemper line about butchering people, "Slamchosis" wastes no time to do some butchering of their own, and not in the negative sense. A violent series of blast and skank beats with a nonstop beatdown of slams. The vocals are exactly those to be expected from this style of music: gargling pigs blood, and often layered on the five minute opener, "Bound to Kill." The following track opens with what sounds like a gravity roll and a mid pitched pig squeal, segwaying into a increasingly brutal grooves, the whole song containing many breakdowns.

"Forced Rectal Exhumation" starts off with more dizzying grooves, soon increasing in intensity, not leaving any breathing room between slam after slam. The title track, "Slamchosis" is a quick one minute and thirty second punch in the face featuring another sample of someone talking about murder, some of the samples taken from the Netflix series Mindhunter, a fitting sample pool for the band as the entire show is simply interviewing serial killers.

This writer could not tell you if "Slam Her Guts Out" is actually about what the title suggests, but there are plenty of chaotic gutterals and blastbeats to confer the idea, maybe. The album ends with "Putrescent Indulgence" and much of the same elements are present with a prevalent tremolo picked melody towards the end.

Let's face it, slam metal is a rather monotonous genre that isn't for everybody. If it is for you, this release is definitely solid if you can get past their incessant need to be edgy, but that is quite expected in this particular scene.