Holland's TOXOCARA bravely re-slip in their battle-tested shiny armour of technically challenging, neck-snapping Death Metal for their sophomore album. The Great Rebellious has all the grace of a war zone, blood is spilled in fountains and cut-off limbs are flying all over the place.
Squeezed in between towering mountain ranges of light-speed riffing Michiel van der Plicht frenetically chops away, punishing his drum-kit with relentless rage and occasionally daring to discipline the down-tuned guitar onslaught into complex time signatures or groovy Sludge breaks. Kevin Quilligan's low-registered, indecipherable growl channels the band's razor-sharp, gargantuan sound into eight short, tightly written diatribes on human Connate Conflict. Rather than indulge in the gorey imagery usually conveyed by sonic violence this brutal, Marjin Moes prefers to mainly draw his lyrical inspiration by historical military events, which are viewed from a fight-for-freedom, in some cases passionately anti-Nazi perspective. Dutch people's heroic, self-sacrificing WWII resistance against fascism is commemorated in the grinding Fusillade The Coalescent, as happens with Warzaw's glorious W-hour (in the bafflingly titled highlight Maenadic Mausoleum), whereas the fittingly holocaustal Among Amon pays a gruesome visit to a polish concentration camp (Plaszow) and its infamously sadistic commandant Amon Goth. Elsewhere 17th century's nine-year War of the Grand Alliance is crammed into The Stories Of The Palatinian Succession's less-than-three minutes of staccato boogey-man phrasing, while the legendary U-48 submarine provides the lyrical groundwork for a spine-tingling barrage of mind-boggling instrumental counter collisions.

Fans of old school chaos created by the use of modern day stylized precision should find this non-stop sensual bludgeoning almost essential.