SVPREMACIST: Meaningless Death
Release year: 2021
Label: Repose Records/Iron, Blood And Death Corporation
Hailing from Israel, Svpremacist ask us the ultimate question with their debut album: is even death real? Do the makers of this website of questionable repute have to question its very foundation? And before you ask, yes, we do speak of ourselves in majestic plural. Or should we, instead, just focus on the damn music?
Let’s go with the music.
Svpremacist, then, are a four-piece who formed in 2017 and have now, after a string of smaller releases, released their debut full-length album. Stylewise, they’re hard to pin down: Metal Archives lists them as a black metal band, elsewhere they’re spoken of as death metal, but undeniably, thrash plays a major part in the sound. So big, that even an amalgam such as deathrash feels out of place.
From the go, it is obvious that Svpremacist kneel at the altar of archaic, primordial extreme metal. That non-denominational altar, where black, death and thrash are represented as equals, as three parts of the same thing. Old school is a befitting name.
So, combining ferocious thrash riffing with a vicious old school, phlegm-filled death metal snarl and plenty of blackened edges, Svpremacist comes across as a band who’ve overdosed on Possessed, the cult Brazilian acts of old, Nifelheim and the likes. Depending on what your preferences are, and what you’re looking for, you might peg this as black/thrash, or death/thrash, or just evil thrash. And it doesn’t really make much of a difference because they’re all applicable.
As always, there are two sides to such a markedly old school sound. On the one hand, it has to be admitted that Svpremacist don’t really come with anything you haven’t heard before. From Possessed to the thrashing black metal and thrashing death metal of later years, to all kinds of retro extreme metal of more recent years, the same waters the Israelis are dragging have been dragged before, even to the point of exhaustion at least as far as originality goes.
But on the other hand, Svpremacist do offer a positively ferocious take on the well-worn style. The drummer plods along in a hurried pace, the riffs rip and shred with venomous sharpness, and the vocalist snarls and shouts with bestial abandon. Pulling their riffs from the core evil metal playbook, Svpremacist turn the familiarity to an advantage with the sheer force of conviction that can be heard from the execution.
The bottom line of it all is really quite simple. There are two significant aspects at play here: originality and quality. Absence of the former, presence of the latter. If the thought of a latter-day re-heating of the same old evil metal stew sounds like you just can’t stand it, then it’s safest to give Meaningless Death a wide berth. But, on the other hand, if a tight shot of classic, primordial extreme metal with only token nods towards modernity feels like what the doctor prescribed, then I’d do two things: search for a more medically-minded physician, and put Meaningless Death on.
We, personally, find Meangingless Death to be a highly appealing album. For sure, most likely we in our royal questionableness may not be spinning this in 20 years’ time as a classic for the ages. But when we do spin it, we will enjoy it for what it is: a very solid piece of latter-day ancient extreme metal in all it’s blackened thrashing death glory.
Only Death Is Real 