Sinsaenum – Repulsion For Humanity album review

It would have been fair enough for Joey Jordison to focus solely on the more commercial aspirations of his other band, Vimic, but his collaboration with Dragonforce’s Frédéric Leclercq continues to be the most exciting thing the former Slipknot drummer is doing right now. Two years on from their excellent Echoes Of The Tortured debut, the only problem Sinsaenum face is that they risk being too extreme for their co-founder’s mainstream audience and, by association, too mainstream to be fully embraced by the underground metal world. In truth, Repulsion For Humanity delivers more of the same high-spec but old-school death metal that made that first album and 2017’s Ashes EP such unexpected thrills; Joey and Frédéric clearly know their shit and deserve better than internecine snobbery.

Echoing the glory days of the late 80s and early 90s in terms of hook-laden and highly memorable songs, these tunes never stray from a line of vicious purity, but there are more than enough wild dynamics and moments of atmospheric ingenuity to allay fears that this is little more than a respectful, immaculately produced tribute to an earlier time. It also helps that vocalist Sean Zatorsky’s feral roar is regularly augmented by Mayhem frontman Attila Csihar’s harrowing shrieks; together, they sound genuinely unhinged. Meanwhile, flat-out assaults like the opening title track and Sworn To Hell are balanced by moodier, nastier material like the sludge-stained I Stand Alone and the creeped-out doomward spiral of Manifestation Of Ignorance. Sinsaenum’s pooled songwriting prowess reaches a peak of finesse on the succinct, infectious Final Resolve and the sprawling, epic muscularity of the eight-minute My Swan Song: prime progressive death metal at its haughty, melodramatic best. From pouting purists to timid part-timers, everyone should give Sinsaenum’s second full-length ride through Hell at least one deafening blast.