Gnaw Their Tongues "Per Flagellum Sanguemque, Tenebras Veneramus"

Per Flagellum Sanguemque, Tenebras Veneramus. Roughly translated, "with blood and whip, we worship the dark". This is the latest collection of atrocities from Gnaw Their Tongues, an eight song investigation into the rites and rituals that emerge from the copper-scented frenzy of the serial killer, the obsessive acts of death worship enacted by those that live on the edge of abyss, the limits of experience sought by black cults. The sound is, as always, immensely heavy, with fractured drums and thunderous tympani skins reverberating within a maelstrom of seething black doom, screeching classical strings, horns, piano, and some of the most vomitous vocals imaginable. However, Per Flagellum Sanguemque is marked by the most frenetic percussive attack that we have heard from Gnaw Their Tongues, with volleys of chaotic drumming, fractured blasts, and maniacally complex patterns that sometimes seem to border on free-jazz drumming.

The band has rarely sounded as nauseating and depraved as it does on the opener "Hic Est Enim Calix Sanguinis Mei", where putrid bass riffs and lurching double bass drums spasm and thunder over the harrowing tension of atonal strings and the layered screams of the eviscerated; when the chaos suddenly drops out and we ... more