Malicious - Merciless Storm - LP

It was but October 2020 when INVICTUS released MALICIOUS' long-awaited debut album, Deranged Hexes. With both band moniker and album title aptly-fucking-named, MALICIOUS' Deranged Hexes completely upratcheted the band's foundational sound - a car crash of cobwebbed evil and gibbering intensity, ranging the likes of Necrovore, ‘80s Possessed, and especially Mike Browning-era Morbid Angel to the earliest (and best) works of Sarcofago and Sepultura - to an insanely OTT level. In every respect, the record was the penultimate in blackened Metal of Death, and it was duly hailed for its dangerously unhinged demeanor.

Three years may've passed since that recording, but MALICIOUS have only become more unhinged in the meantime. Witness the four-song Merciless Storm. Tauntingly titled once again, Merciless Storm picks up right where Deranged Hexes left off, but sees the Finns following a natural progression in all aspects. With a runtime of 11 minutes, it's mercilessly / mercifully short and sweet, upping the violence and aggression to levels impossibly beyond that nuclear-powered debut album. And yet, the songwriting remains stout and streamlined and perhaps minutely more detailed and even palatably "refined." If anything, Merciless Storm possesses a clearer soundfield, but that only amplifies the savagery to an insane degree, especially the '80s Slayer-style solos. Nothing else to say: this is a fucking Merciless Storm!