2025 sees the release of US Death Metal band KONTUSION’s first full-length album following their 2022 demo. “Insatiable Lust For Death” gets a CD and vinyl record release through Profound Lore Records and is presented as being “evil Death Metal” from the East Coast of the USA. I believe the part about it being evil is maybe tongue in cheek as my first impression was that this is a contemporary take on the Deathgrind style of older bands like TERRORIZER and CARNAGE. You’ll notice that song lengths rarely go above three minutes and while they’re not fully into Grindcore less-than-a-minute territory, they’re still pretty short for a Death Metal album. The full-length of the album is a bit over 26 minutes which would put it in the EP category if you would judge it solely as Death Metal. If you’re still not convinced this is more than what it presents itself as, you can take a shot each time the drums go into D-Beat mode. But is it any good? Yes, of course! Maybe you’re into bands that play punkified versions of Death Metal like NECROT and VASTUM, or you just wished that D-Beat Crust went even harder, downtuning the guitars and maybe even getting a little bit evil. It makes perfect sense that both members of the band are seasoned musicians from mostly Hardcore Punk adjacent bands like MAGRUDERGRIND, REPULSION (not an original member), IRON REAGEN, MAMMOTH GRINDER and others. You could judge this as a Powerviolence leaning into Death Metal bands like NAILS. But this is certainly not an Entombedcore band or a bunch of Hardcore dudes starting a Death Metal band by adding blast beats between their breakdowns. There are songs like ‘Throne Of Skulls’ that employ classical tremolo riffing and double bass drumming, and many of them such as the first song on the album, ‘Endless Horror’, have competent guitar solos that put them firmly in the Death Metal genre. The production is contemporary, comparable to what you might call cavernous Death Metal, even if it lacks hypnotic guitar leads and slow tempos, there is a constant wall of noise being thrown at you. The bass is distorted, the drums are reverberating and organic and the guitar doesn’t have the compressed perfection of Scott Burns era Death Metal and its modern imitators. On a song like ‘Subjugation’ for example, in the intro you can notice that some of the guitar stabs might not be perfectly muted, string noise being left in the mix and you might call this out for sloppiness, but I think it contributes to the general rawness and helps differentiate this album from more modern highly polished musical styles. The artwork, done by Rotting Reign, perfectly fits this rawness, being more akin to monochrome Death Metal demos than to full-lengths with elaborate cover paintings. To close it all off, KONTUSION play a cover of THE SHITLIKERS’ ‘Warsystem’ to make it perfectly clear that this release is a beefed up form of D-beat Crust (which might be a modern rehash of what some of the Death Metal originators were doing in the first place). It makes sense that this record has been released by Profound Lore Records who have a roster of less conservative takes on traditional styles and permit the experimentation of musicians with a Punk background. Recommended for fans of Powerviolence, Crust Punk and faster paced Sludge Metal getting into Death Metal, but also those who love chunky primitive Death Metal and especially Deathgrind. More info at: www.instagram.com/kontusion, https://kontusionkontusion.bandcamp.com, www.facebook.com/profoundlorerecords