Review MONSTROSITY “Screams From Below the Surface”

It’s fair to say that Monstrosity aren’t flooding the metal market with releases. The Florida-based death metal band are genre veterans, having released their debut album in 1992. Even at this early stage in the band’s career, they launched records at 3–4-year intervals before taking 11 years to work on their sixth studio album.

“The Passage of Existence” was issued in 2018, but if you thought the band was back on track, you’d be wrong. Fans had to wait another eight years for the next death metal blast.

The new album is called “Screams From Beneath the Surface”, and Monstrosity kick it off with a song called “Banished to the Skies”. They start their newest studio release with a curveball, as the opener surprises in two ways. Firstly, it is rather unusual to start a death metal album with a six-minute epic, and secondly, Monstrosity have added a rather traditional metal twist to their music. Besides the demonic vocals of Mike Hrubovcak, the song is quite melodic. The guitar melodies in particular show references to traditional heavy metal, making for an interesting experiment at the beginning of the album.

With “The Colossal Rage”, the band readjusts the needle on their metal compass, returning to a more old-school death metal sound with a stronger thrash metal influence. The song, with its blast beat, is a metallic steamroller running at you with full force. Screaming guitars and intense growls form the backbone of this song, and the following “The Atrophied” heads in a similar direction. It is an up-tempo song that shows no mercy, but it is also somewhat predictable.

Monstrosity continues with their in-your-face approach, recording songs such as the blistering “Vapors” and the furious “Blood Works”, which combines speed and groove.

As mentioned, it took the band a while to finish this album. “Screams from Beneath the Surface” is certainly a good old-school death metal album, from start to finish. At the same time, however, these ten songs don’t offer many new twists or surprises. It is a well-crafted, evil-grinning death metal album that showcases a band that played an important role in defining an entire genre. While it is a solid death metal release that lives up to expectations, it doesn’t really venture into uncharted territory though.