Horrendous started out as a fairly traditional riff-after-riff death metal band, chugging away and howling at the morbid night with tales of gruesome occult horror on their debut The Chills. It wasn't a great album, and in fact sounded like the band was already bored with their genre-specific constraints. When Ecdysis, a veritable genre-bending work full of more traditional/power metal-based riffing combined with the darker extreme metal atmosphere, came out, it was obvious they wanted to do different things. Now we have Anareta, their third full length in only a few years, and it's excellent, a true masterpiece of the genre. This album is full of technical, garroting rhythms mixed with Maiden-style harmonies and dry, rasping vocals that could be from an album that came out alongside Unquestionable Presence or an older Pestilence album. The guitar tone is surprisingly crisp and melodic for a death metal band, allowing all the riffs and melodies to be clearly heard. Like on Ecdysis, it sounds like what melodeath could have been as a genre if it hadn't been polluted by swill like In Flames. There's a distinct lack of categorization in terms of the album's genre - it isn't any one specific thing; it just is, an inimical behemoth of a metal album that throws chugging, blasting riffwork at you one second and then has you contemplating wistfully as the songs slow down for a mournful lead section with pounding, atmospheric drums. They can do black metal-styled tremolo riffing and also bass-heavy rock grooves and licks, but it all fits surprisingly into place and nothing sounds attention whoreish or gimmicky - it's just who they are as a band. The lead guitar tone sounds very floaty and ghostlike, sort of hovering over the riffs like a heavy fog. The songs are all vibrant, lean and surprising. Opener "The Nihilist" follows no traditional structure, winding and contorting itself in fresh, exciting, strange ways. "Ozymandias" is an epic that shines when it breaks from its stomping riffwork into the searing, atmospheric leads and when the vocals go into an oddly desperate, horrifying semi-clean part near the end - it's just a huge, engrossing song. Further tracks like the shredfest "Sum of All Failures" and the merciless riff-storm "Stillborn Gods" combine rocking riffs with a morbid, contemplative, serious attitude, making an exquisite and unique experience. Closer "The Solipsist" has the most traditional rock-styled groove to it, ending the album on a memorable, hooky note. Lyrically this is all very good; rather obtuse, but rewarding to decipher, spinning tales of bleak nihilism, falls from grace, the mundane nature of life and soul-sucking religions in a poetic voice that I find captivating and engaging. The nihilism is a big theme I get from a lot of this album's lyrics, a sort of unflinching, forceful gaze into the world and onesself from that perspective. You can tell effort was put into these lyrics, and they are extremely well written in a poetic sense, and so they become a pleasure to read and a part of why this album is so good. A lot of metal albums from 2010 and onward that I like are those that sound like the band members grew up deeply entrenched in the metal culture and sound, so much so that they wanted to make it themselves. You can hear it in Horrendous, where the influences are varied and plentiful, and the band obviously took parts of different genres they liked and did new, cool things with them. Anareta is a fresh take on the genre and shows that metal isn't just some dying art of old headbangers. The way I always describe this is "metal for the metalheads" - this is clearly music made by people who fucking love heavy metal and probably have for a long time, and they made it for fans who want real, serious underground music that panders to no one. That adds to the coolness factor. You can hear it dripping and oozing from every note.
