Vehemency Blasphemy Rites has been in existence for the last 13 years but has kept relatively low profile, not until this year releasing their major debut, entitled as Hideous Lord that offers a violent, uncompromising blast of blackened death metal in the spirit of Blasphemy and Sarcófago, and somehow this also reminds me strongly of Blasphemophagher. So, absolutely nothing refreshing or innovative is to be expected of Hideous Lord but, of course, that is not necessarily a requirement in making a crushing album.

Comprising fifteen tracks of which mere two cross the three-minute mark, Hideous Lord is evidently one swift monster. The only occasional breathing breaks are given in the form of short ambient interludes between some songs, but other than that, the music demolishes everything on its way. Old school spirit, some chuggy riffage in the middle of tremolo, beats shifting from blast beats to only fairly slower ones, high-range screaming. All is done with professional spirit and there’s no question of the players’ technical abilities. The crispy production works perfectly here, something that albums like Diocletian’s muffled Doom Cult definitely miss.

But how memorable, then, Hideous Lord is? Not much, I must confess, as it’s a real pain in the ass to distinguish the songs from each other: occasional guitar solos are a nice feature and so are the three cover tracks in the end of the album but other than that the songs don’t have much grabbing elements in them. Surely the point of Hideous Lord is to create old school black/death but I wouldn’t mind hearing some innovation here either, because as it is, the 32-minute death manifest becomes a bit dull after the first few tracks. Not to undermine the overall devastating power of the album, however.