STORM DEATH – CHAOS WILL REIGN!

(Andy Synn has a storm of praise for the new album from Storm Death, out now)

One of the great things about writing here (and, trust me, there’s a lot of them) is that we aren’t beholden to anyone or anything – not PR firms, not labels, not advertisers, not deadlines, etc – when it comes to what we cover, or when we cover it.

Case in point, we have the freedom to cover, say, a pretty big name like The Great Old Ones or the highly-anticipated (and much hyped) debut from a band like Retromorphosis, only to then pivot entirely to a much less well-known, but no less deserving, band like Chilean death-dealers Storm Death, whose new album, Chaos Will Reign!, came out just last week.

The undeniable appeal of Chaos Will Reign! can pretty much be summed up in one listen to the album’s outstanding opening track, “Those Who Came From the Dark Side of the Stars”, which is already an early candidate for “Song of the Year”.

Clocking in at a little under eleven minutes, it’s as big, as bold, and as brash as they come – swinging for the fences and connecting hard with every burst of thrashy belligerence, blasting ferocity, and chunky, chugging riffosity (while also throwing in lashings of lacerating leads on top of all that) – that’s also as unapologetically hooky, both rhythmically and melodically, as it is unflinchingly heavy.

The sheer scale and scope of the song is also a testament to the band’s impressive creative ambitions, especially during its immersive, atmosphere-intense mid-section, which replaces all the raging distortion and rampaging aggression with a moody procession of esoteric, non-metallic instrumentation and ululating female vocals that together showcase a very different, but not unwelcome, side to the band’s sound.

Of course, the molten core of the album is still a roiling cauldron of thrilling, thrash-tinged Death Metal which owes much of its elemental extremity to the likes of Sarcófago, Vader, and Morbid Angel (with “Paradigm of the Experiment Inserted Across the Universe It Responds To The Inconsistencies Of Human Creation” in particular leaning heavily into the latter pairing with its rip-roaring first half and grinding, groaning back end), but Storm Death‘s biggest strength here is the way they take these influences and forge them into something that, while not necessarily ground-breaking, is nevertheless absolutely unbreakable.

And it’s because the resultant alloy is so strong that the group aren’t afraid to occasionally indulge their proggier proclivities (not just during the extensive atmospheric middle of the aforementioned opener, but also in moments like the opulent outro to “Ouroboros” and the sublimely cinematic intro of “Ruins… Babylon’s Fall”) or flex their more melodic muscles (“Infamous Discord”, for example, being built around a moody melodic motif which recalls God Dethroned at their best), or even to lean into a sense of shameless, blackened bombast reminiscent of early 2000s-era Behemoth (“La Proclamación Del Caos Que Reinará”), without it ever feeling like they’re simply following in anyone else’s footsteps or adhering to any sort of formula.

Sure, the way the albums ends probably could have been improved by replacing the unnecessarily overblown “Hecatombe” with something a little more musically rewarding (simply shifting the irresistible intensity of “Calling to the War” into its place would probably have done it, as the climax of that one could definitely have served as a fitting finale for the whole thing in a pinch), as this would have given the record a greater sense of overarching symmetry, but that’s really a relatively minor complaint and/or disappointment in the grand scheme of things.

Make no mistake, while it may only be February this is one album I expect to hear more about come the end of the year when we’re all taking stock of the “best” of 2025… let’s just hope more people discover it before then!