Expectations can be a destructive thing, making someone feel extra and often unneeded pressure when trying to create something or do a job. The anxiety can get to you and circumvent your creativity and effectiveness, and questioning oneself can become damaging and threatening to what you’re trying to accomplish. Saying fuck it and going with your gut sometimes is the best way forward.

Philly death metal dreamers Horrendous made the decision to forget the outside noise and block what other people say about them and their art and made a motherfucker of a progressively vicious record “Ontological Mysterium.” This band already was one of the more forward-thinking groups in all of death metal, having made four previous records that challenged and confounded on different levels. This one just feels different, like the band—guitarist/vocalist Damian Herring, guitarist/vocalist Matt Knox, bassist Alex Kulick, drummer Jamie Knox—decided to design their own style of death metal DNA, one that twists and toys with your psyche, presenting an adventure that few other artists could realize. It’s a 38-minute jolt of electricity and dexterity, one of the most exciting thing this quartet of creators ever spawned.

“The Blaze” dawns with whispering swirling in the air, guitars slowly opening, and a combo of wild calls and shrieks combining, sprawling and flowing into “Chrysopoeia (The Archaeology of Dawn)” that envelopes in progressive dreams and power. Crazed shrieks attack the senses, nastiness and ferocity meet in the middle, and Herring wails, “I will coax you out like vermin hiding in every crawl space in your heart, and you’ll flow out, blinding.” The pace changes up and steamy leads burn, making breathing difficult, clean warbles causing  you to question your sanity as things storm to a close. “Neon Leviathan” open with the rhythm section pulsing, the guitars enrapturing as the pace continues to build. Strange alien effects make you try to grasp sanity, or at least something steady, the soloing lights up the sky, and speed becomes a more immersive factor, bleeding into mystical strangeness. “Aurora Neoterica” is an instrumental with slinking bass snaking through blood, and a dreamy ambiance taking hold and immediately dropping your body temperature, basking in peculiar energies.

“Preterition Hymn” slithers into nightmares, the guitars heat up, and vicious shrieks rain down nails of terror. A strong bassline acts as a spine as tangling guitars and a vicious pace grow like muscle around it, the waters getting unsettlingly warmer. “Arise in flame, Enochian, I’m robed in flame, Enochian, free from this dream, Enochian,” is chanted, twisting your mind, flowing out in mellotron haze. “Cult of Shaad’oah” thrashes in, wild howls taking on your sanity. The vocals crush as the playing opens oceanlike with possibilities, both rushing and crushing, soothing and aggravating. Lashing back at gods who questioned, the viciousness gets deeper and spookier, crazed howls peel back eyelids, and the final moments drop like bombs. “Exeg(en)esis” starts with a robotic voice serenely conveying messages, but you notice you’re anything but calm. Guitars open and pick up their adventurous desires, strange voices circulating in the skies, speed jolting before everything disappears into a vacuum. The title track brings bending riffs and animalistic howls, thrashy meanness rising, cries echoing behind. The playing rampages as the guitars charge, storming and swelling, everything ending in blood. Closer “The Death Knell Ringeth” is a lash back at expectation and those who question, with the howl of, “Anemic dinosaur drunk on nostalgia, clinging to crumbling walls, wipe that grin off your smug face before I teach you what life’s about.” Hazy guitars and slinking bass unite while the tempo is mashing and warped, the violent tendencies come to a head, and everything slowly fades into oblivion, the final death bell signaling the end.

“Ontological Mysterium” is a document from a band that already twisted brains into pretzels finding new and exciting ways to be bafflingly next level. Horrendous have been on a mission to contort death metal to their desire ever since they started, and even with four challenging records on their resume before this one, they refuses to tread familiar territory. This record took a few visits to grow on me, but once these electrifying, thought-provoking songs sunk in, everything made sense in a different way that could not be understood before visiting with this album.   

For more on the band, go here: https://www.facebook.com/HorrendousDeathMetal

To buy the album (North America), go here: https://shopusa.season-of-mist.com/

Or here (International): https://shop.season-of-mist.com/

For more on the label, go here: https://www.season-of-mist.com/