Releasing a steady flow of demos since their formation in 2005, FERETRO, a Death Metal band out of Chile, has released its first full-length album after 20 years of existence through Nihilistic Holocaust out of France. A label that has also had a steady, but not overwhelming flow of releases since about the same time period. The album titled “The Mortuary Destiny Of Flesh” is a gem untouched by modernity for the old school Death Metal listener. It is arguably so old school that at times it sounds like a collection of the building blocks for Death Metal: some fast evil Thrash riffs and some slower dark Doom riffs. The guitars don’t sound down tuned (or not by a lot) and they can write evil riffs without the help of extra low end. The main influences (and main selling points for the old school Death Metal listener) seem to be the Dutch Death / Doom giants ASPHYX and the fathers of Death Metal, DEATH. I’ll elaborate on this through a couple of case studies. The third song, ‘The Ancient Horror’, is a perfect example of ASPHYX’s possible influence on FERETRO. The asphyxiated vocals (pun very much intended) with a guttural tail, the slow melodic guitar soloing and the slow traditional Doom sounding riff, that they embellish with a slight melodicism putting their own spin on the style. You can feel the Doom Metal influences on the next song too, ‘In Agony’, but this time sounding less like ASPHYX and more like a South American precursor to Death Metal, playing fast thrashy tremolo riffs in between and also the slow Doom Metal hooks in the mix. On their mostly instrumental track ‘The Hour Of Death’ I could at some point hear some notes almost lifted just as is off of the intro to ASPHYX’s self-titled song (the one on “Last One On Earth”). The outro song ‘Epitaph’ adds some keys, this possibly being yet another nod to the Dutch legends who had them in their songs intros and outros. But this could also be a try at expanding their sound in a more dark romantic way, I would be interested in hearing an album where they apply this to most of their songs, but I will not be disappointed if they change nothing at all for their next future release. This being said, don’t expect an ASPHYX rip off with FERETRO, these guys are their own band and have more than just one trick in their pocket. Such as the songs and song parts that lean more into early DEATH. Take for example ‘Time To Die’, it has the simple 2-3 note tremolo riffs and the chromatic riffs employing diminished arpeggios which give a bit of a technical sound, but in a very simplistic way akin to old school Death Metal. The drums here are pretty upbeat, keeping a steady double bass rhythm to complement the tremolo picking, very much in the vein of the first era of DEATH when they did not employ Jazz drummers. The drumming is quite competent throughout the whole album, not doing anything weird or lacking, but serving the songs exactly in the way you’d expect from a top classic Death Metal release. The vocal style is guttural and not very deep or low, sounding very much in the style of ASPHYX, PESTILENCE, OBITUARY. At times some phrases end in a more raspy sound that would normally be employed by Black Metal vocalists, but also specific to the South American extreme Metal style. Context is important here, while the vocals have most of these attributes throughout the whole album, the riffs accompanying them will make you think of something like SARCOFAGO or GRAVE DESECRATOR, but also at times a band like MORGOTH. While the songs having Doom Metal parts stand out more to me than the fast ones, the change of pace is nice and in a live setting would surely keep the audience entertained, surprising them with some energizing riffs between the slower introspective anthems. Give “The Mortuary Destiny Of Flesh” a listen if you’re starving for some early classic sounding Death Metal. http://feretro.bandcamp.com, www.facebook.com/nihilisticzinedistro