### Terrordrome: The day of sacrilege

#### 02/08/12 || The Duff

Terrordrome are a Greek death metal band that released a full-length “Vehement Convulsions” back in 2008 and a split-EP with Oath to Vanquish back in 2010. While their full-length was quite the regular fare, I was impressed by it; the riffs showed promise, but with the follow-up EP, I may have said that the sound wasn’t befitting of a Grindethic band. They’d infused a lot of flashy tech into their sound, and here we are with the follow-up.

Right off the bat, they piss me off by including the two tracks from “Begotters of Fear and Ruin”, making me question why I had to buy something limited to so many copies. Anyways, to say the tracks that follow on from the two openers would be of the same ilk would be a good representation of an outfit that is gradually shedding itself of the unnecessary and honing its songwriting craft. Thankfully also the production has been muddied and the music brutalised since the E.P.

The music is generally awesome, no-frills brutal death metal the likes of which we should all be familiar with, but to spice it up some they’ve added solo tech leads and flamenco sections, plus Motorhead/Darkthrone and Mudvayne influences in the most bizarre of circumstances, all of which could be perceived as jarring. It certainly makes the album an engaging listen and definitely partly novel – Terrordrome are trying their own thing while integrating it with a solid standard of Disgorge/Suffo and jazz-tech of the Spawn of Possession ilk.

The drumming and vocals of Bill and Peter, respectively, are the highlight for me; the latter sounds like a mixture of the dude from Infected Disarray, Vogg “Winds…”-era (also check 00:17 into “Impale the Unfit Servant” for a great reminder of the Poles’ glory days), and the first two albums of Bloodbath combined. I’m trying not to say regular death metal fare here, because there is something generally unique to his style. The drumming is of an insanely high calibre, everything so definitive, he knows how to groove and as far as BDM drummers go is much more creative than most, relentless yet somehow very able to sit back and let some air to the otherwise very busy guitars.

All in all, this is so close to stealing a top-spot at the end of the year; I want to give it a nine out of ten, as it is an enormous leap from their debut which was good in its own right, but the band appears to be finding its own sound in some ways in others close to painting itself into a corner. I’m going to give it an 8.5 because the next album will surely tell all – they have the potential to release something off the charts, paralleled only by the very best of the sub-genre.

- Information
- Released: 2012
- Label: Grindethic Records
- Website: Terrordrome MySpace
- Band
- Anestis Varitiniadis: bass
- Sakis Chatzitakis: guitars
- Peter “Terror” Ouzounis: vocals
- Bill Stavrianidis: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. Alas, In the Wound…
- 02. …For Mayhem to Begin
- 03. Bounded
- 04. Moribund
- 05. The Day of Sacrilege
- 06. Compel to Sin
- 07. Conceit Is the Disease
- 08. Impale the Unfit Servant
- 09. Antediluvian Malediction