Hell, yeah! The obscure, evil and dense MALTHUSIAN is back with a new full-length, “The Summoning Bell.” Released on digital, CD and two 12″ vinyl, this time via Relapse Records. And I find this album very familiar and stuck to the origins of the band, something I always appreciate. I hate when bands change over the years. I remember I knew MALTHUSIAN just with their previous full-length “Across Deaths” from 2018; I immediately got captivated by this entity. Of course, it’s a band that can be easily enrolled in those cavernous blackened Death Metal, Death / Doom Metal regions that someone like me is always interested in. If you are not familiar with the band, MALTHUSIAN’s music is in a similar line of bands like INCANTATION, DISMA, KRYPTS, ÆVANGELIST, ABYSSAL or PHOBOCOSM, taking (within the same corpus) the obscurity, ferocity and density, deep inside the caves. You know, I really like bands with those kinds of deep, guttural vocals because, for me, this is what creates that dense and dark feel to the sound, ultimately, the concept behind. And this is what happens with MALTHUSIAN’s vocalist “MB”, who seems to feel at home singing like that. You can compare what he does with the band YEAR NAUGHT DOOM. But “BM” is not alone; “TMK” on the other guitar, “FB” on bass and “JK” on drums, all of them, experienced musicians, bring all that experience to the album. Now, going to the album itself, this eight track and over 54 minutes “thing” is a total black hole. It will swallow you, I promise. While ‘Isolation’ (first track) is like a slow return from a long dream of centuries, all of a sudden hits you in the face with ‘Red, Waiting’, a track that instantly presents what MALTHUSIAN really is: density. It starts with fury but it will transition around slow-tempo, mid-tempo and up-tempo all across the song, like preparing us for what is to come. ‘Between Dens And Ruins’ and ‘The Summoning Bell’ are (in general) keeping the same structure. Things will break up with ‘The Onset Of The Death Of Man’, an atmospheric and slow instrumental that will transport you down to the ground, where you belong to, before you get ‘Eroded Into Superstition’, a track that will scare you as inside an angry man will be mad at you and it looks like he has something to tell you. Then, we fall down into ‘Amongst The Swarms Of Vermin’, the longest track on the album, 15 minutes, 31 seconds. Here, the band has more time to develop ideas and express brutality, obscurity and all kinds of transitions in between, taking you back and forth, while the guitars explore melody and enchantment. Finally we have (to close the album) ‘In Chaos, Exult’, almost an instrumental with spoken words, that encapsulates the entire concept of the album: chaos. In general, “The Summoning Bell” will kick your ass. This is a highly recommended album if you are into that more dense corner of Death Metal. More info here: www.facebook.com/malthusiandm, www.facebook.com/relapserecords