Hyperdontia - Harvest of Malevolence

Angry Metal Guy 60

Danish/Turkish old school death metal project Hyperdontia was unknown to me until I was heavily exposed to their 2021 album Hideous Entity during several sessions at my local tattoo parlor. I initially thought they were blasting an Immolation album I couldn’t place and I quickly got on board with the classic death metal the band was delivering. The formula itself was an old one, but it was spiced up by impressive technicality and dynamism that flashed influences like Morbid Angel and early Pestilence. A few years on and here comes third full-length, Harvest of Malevolence and Hyperdontia haven’t changed much. It’s pure, rip-roaring OSDM fury with little effort made to bring it into modern day. The band flashes tons of chops but never threaten to turn the brutish stomping into something wanky or fancy-bepantsy. Will such a basic approach net big returns with so many bands out there doing the same thing? Let’s sink our teeth into the album meat.

No intro, no fucking around is the death metal mantra I can get behind, and opener “Death’s Embrace” comes right out swinging. That classic old time death gallop segues into rabid blasts and mammoth grooves as you get shook up and smacked down by the ugly racket. It’s the kind of death you buy into immediately and there’s a lot to love about the grisly precision with which the band slices and dices. “Salvation in Death” swifts tempos willy-nilly, often sounding like something off Pestilence’s Testimony of the Ancients, and those burly riffs are money. It runs about a minute too long, but there’s good fun to be had. “Marking the Rite” hits the spot as well with a healthy portion of nasty, abrasive riffage and titanic grooves. It’s high-energy shit and it scratches the common death itches, though it isn’t doing anything new.

The rest of Harvest of Malevolence is less impactful, however, with the writing starting to fray around the edges. I appreciate the mild flirtations with Bolt Thrower-esque power plowing during “Pestering Lamentations,” and “Defame Flesh” moves from eerie Incantation-isms to thrashing intensity with Morbid Angel living loudly in the riffage, but “Pervasive Rot” is very stock and generic and goes on for what feels like a week, causing me to lose focus multiple times along the way. “Irrevocable Disaster” is blasty and convoluted and reminds me of the stuff off Pestilence’s mighty Consuming Impulse, but it never gets anyplace better than average. At a short 39:50, there’s still a sense of bloat riding several tracks though none reach the 6-minute mark. The bigger issue is a looming feeling of over-familiarity. The best moments rise above the sense of “heard it all before,” but the bulk of the album hits the bar and falls back into the muck of just good enough.

The band is uber talented and capable of high levels of technical showboatery, which makes it all the more impressive that they restrain themselves from going full wanky cranky. Mustafa Gürcalioğlu (Diabolizer, Engulfed) and Mathias Friborg (Sulphurous) are very talented axe murders and they dot the landscape with a good collection of cutting riffs and chunky grooves. They also dazzle with solo work that rides the line between impressive and maybe too melodic for the surrounding brutish cavemanery. Friborg’s vocals are appropriately guttural and ugly but there’s little variation to his delivery. Malik Çamlıca (Diabolizer) makes sure his bass is present and bubbling, and I enjoy the drumming of Tuna (Redivivus, ex-Phrenelith). The man rides his kit hard and puts it away broken, and my ears are routinely drawn to what he’s doing back there. Talent abounds, but the resulting material is less than you’d expect from such an able crew.

Harvest of Malevolence is a completely serviceable death metal album with a few fairly killer moments. No one will think it’s a waste of listening time, though many may arrive expecting more than what’s delivered. Hyperdontia have all the tools to be a tier-one player in the death arena, and their earlier album are impressive. This one feels less bitey. I’ll probably give it a fair number of spins, but I suspect this will be swept away by the tides of new releases before long.



Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Dark Descent
Websites: hyperdontiaofficial.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/hyperdontia | instagram.com/hyperdontiaofficial
Releases Worldwide: June 21st, 2024

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